


What Else Matters?

by queenofkadara



Series: The World and All Its Lessons: A Song of Aloy and Nil [7]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, But eventual happy ending because NILOY FOREVER, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Romance, Smut, YES THERE WILL BE HELLA ANGST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-12 17:48:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 65,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12965001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofkadara/pseuds/queenofkadara
Summary: Rumours of a dangerous new machine threat in the Cut sound like the perfect honeymoon opportunity for Aloy and Nil. But the Banuk’s unusual ways lead them to clash in ways that neither of them expects.***********This is the next installment in my Niloy saga,The World and All Its Lessons: A Song of Aloy and Nil.This story follows events from the Frozen Wilds DLC, so spoilers for the entire DLC abound. Beware!Ya'll know me by now: there will be angst. Also, rated E for eventual NSFW smut smut smut. ;)





	1. Premonition

The Stalker’s headlights flashed abruptly from yellow to red. Nil almost didn’t have time to roll aside before the Stalker launched itself at him with a metallic screech. 

It was a near miss, with the Stalker’s claws missing his shoulder by bare centimetres, but a successful miss. Swiftly Nil shot two tearblast arrows at the Stalker’s stealth generator, then ran and slid into some long grass and listened with satisfaction to the piercing shriek of torn components as the tearblast ammo did its work. 

The Stalker whirled, its rump sparking with damage, then launched itself at him again. Nil shot precision arrow after precision arrow at its dart gun and mine launchers, dodging and rolling swiftly between arrows to avoid the Stalker’s piercing tail.

The fight was over within minutes and Nil crouched breathlessly in the grass, unscathed but unsatisfied. He still had to make his way along the upper level, then through the rest of the mountain’s fucking underground facility. Nil supposed he should be grateful he’d chosen the stealthier path towards the facility door. Stalkers were bad, but it was either _this_ or the Behemoth and the Scorchers down in the killing field, and Nil was under no illusions about his ability to destroy that many advanced machines single-handedly. He might be good, having learned everything Suntress had to teach about fighting machines, but he simply didn’t have her gifts of metal death.

A sudden burning pain slammed into his left shoulder, and Nil stumbled forward before rolling defensively and drawing his bow. He spun on his heel to face the Scrapper that had just blasted him and enjoyed the hollow slam of metal as his arrow pierced the Scrapper’s power cell. 

Then an ear-splitting shriek of rage pierced his ears from behind. 

A surge of sheer frustration washed over him, but Nil didn’t hesitate as he rose from the grass and aimed his bow at the Longlegs’ air bladder. There was no space or time for hesitation now. 

He had no choice, after all. He was fighting these machines alone.

*****************

**One month earlier…**

Aloy and Nil strolled up along the red dirt path to Brin’s old cabin. Aloy smiled as she spotted Luka kneeling in front of the campfire, her eyes closed and her slender face relaxed and peaceful. 

Quietly they approached Luka’s campfire, and Aloy respectfully took a seat on the bench across the fire from Luka, happy to wait for the young shaman to finish her meditation. Nil, however, had no qualms about bothering his best friend; he noisily walked around behind Luka and flicked the back of her head in a friendly greeting before joining Aloy on the bench. 

Luka opened one eye, and a slow smile lit her face as Aloy elbowed Nil chidingly. “Huntress. Prince,” she greeted them with mocking formality. Her black eyes sparkled with welcome. “It’s good to see you.”

Aloy smiled at Luka. “I was hoping we would find you here,” she said. Luka had taken occupancy of the cabin after Brin had disappeared, but Aloy and Nil didn’t always manage to catch Luka here during their travels, as Luka was frequently off on machine hunts of her own. “We’re actually heading up north, so we might not see you for a while.” 

Luka’s eyes widened. “North? You mean to Ban-Ur?”

“Not quite,” Aloy replied. “We’re headed to the Cut. We’ve been hearing some strange news from Carja and Oseram travellers who were headed out towards Ban-Ur, but they came straight back without making it past the Cut.” An Oseram merchant named Ohtur had explained to her that the Cut was a Banuk territory that had been devastated by the Red Raids. 

Aloy tilted her head curiously. “Word is that there’s some kind of trouble up north. A new machine threat of some kind. And something about talking spirits?”

Luka’s face was grave as she took in this news, and she nodded seriously. “I’ve been seeing signs of danger in my meditations as well,” she agreed. “A darkness leaching the Blue Light from the northern lands.”

“The Blue Light? What’s that?” Aloy asked curiously. 

Luka smiled gently. “You’ll find out soon enough. I’ll leave it to the ‘real’ Banuk to explain it to you.” She shot Nil a playful smirk. “You’re going to have to gear up. You’re no better than naked dressed as you are.” Her gaze was disparaging as she inspected his usual lightweight outfit of vest, silk trousers, sandals and machine armour. 

Aloy shook her head and shot Nil a look of fond exasperation. “That’s another reason we’re here. I was hoping you could talk some sense into him. He refused to buy Banuk clothing before we left.” 

“You should both stop worrying,” Nil interjected lazily. “I enjoy the cold. Carja scholars have gone to Ban-Ur with only the silks on their backs. If they can do it, I’ll do it even better.”

“Fire and spit, Nil,” Aloy said in annoyance. “We’re going to the land of snow and ice. You can’t wear sandals in the land of snow and ice.”

Nil gave Aloy a charming little smile. “The flames of your hair will keep me warm, Suntress. Don’t worry.” 

Aloy wilted in exasperation at his blatant attempt to flatter her, but before she could argue further, Luka leaned forward, her eyes intent on Nil’s face. “You don’t want a repeat of our first meeting, do you?” she said quietly. “That’s what will happen if you go north unprepared.”

Aloy swallowed hard and looked at Nil; all signs of humour had faded from his face at Luka’s words. It had been eight months or so since she and Nil had reunited, but the thought of Nil almost dying in a snowbank still haunted Aloy during that fine line between wake and sleep. 

Nil shot Aloy a vaguely apologetic glance, then finally shrugged in bad-tempered acquiescence. “All right. I’ll gear up when we get there.”

“Not good enough,” Luka replied briskly. She stood up and strode into Brin’s cabin, then came back with a pair of thick furry boots and fingerless fur-and-leather gloves. She plonked the items in Nil’s arms. “Take these,” she said firmly. “None of Brin’s other clothes would fit you, but these will be a start.”

Nil eyed the boots with revulsion, but Aloy gazed up at Luka gratefully. “Thank you,” she murmured, and Luka shot her a smile of warm understanding. Aloy patted Nil’s arm the way she might pet a tamed Ravager. “We’ll buy more clothes along the way.”

“Hmph. Forcing me to wear outlander clothing on my own honeymoon,” he muttered resentfully.

Luka grinned at Aloy and Nil. “ _This_ is your honeymoon? A trip to the most unforgiving territory in the known world to investigate some unknown danger?” She laughed. “The two of you are _very_ weird.”

Nil smiled and slung an arm around Aloy’s shoulders. “I’m looking forward to it. The Sundom has become boring. Placid weather, placid peace… Even the bandits are placid. There’s no challenge here. I’m hoping we’ll find some heartier bandits in the north.” He quirked an eyebrow at Luka. “Banuk bandits do know how to fight humans, don’t they?”

Luka rolled her eyes and threw a small rock at Nil, who smirked and deflected the rock with his arm. “Yes, Nil,” Luka drawled, “Banuk bandits will be a nice challenge for you. They genuinely might be more vicious than the bandits you find here in the south. After all, we Banuk are nothing if not hardy.”

Nil smiled at Aloy and rubbed his hands together with relish. “Excellent. This trip is already off to a good start.”

Aloy smiled back somewhat tightly. It was true that Aloy was looking forward to a fresh adventure with Nil, but she had another reason for wanting to go on this trip: she needed a distraction from her failure to fix GAIA. It had been almost three years now since the Battle of HADES, and Aloy felt like she’d made no progress towards fixing the terraforming AI. Aloy was certain that she’d scrounged up every data file and audio point and Old Ones’ text that she could find, and still she couldn’t bring GAIA back to life. 

As the Old Ones would say, the problem seemed to be a hardware issue. Aloy felt like she had a strong grasp of the Old Ones’ holographic interfaces and how to get instructions into the machines using these interfaces, but GAIA needed a special machine to live in… and the only way that Aloy knew of making special machines was a Cauldron. And no matter how much she had tried to manipulate the Cauldrons with her override spear and her Focus, she couldn’t get the Cauldrons to make the parts she needed. 

GAIA’s dormant state was becoming torturous for Aloy. She couldn’t help but feel like her inability to resurrect GAIA was a character flaw. How was it that GAIA could fight through HADES’ shackles to bring Aloy herself to life, but Aloy couldn’t use all the resources at her disposal to bring GAIA back? What was _wrong_ with her?

Suddenly Nil’s lips were at her ear. “Let your mind be easy,” he murmured soothingly. “A new danger for others always means new information for you, Suntress. Maybe you’ll learn something that will help with your GAIA entity.” 

Aloy closed her eyes briefly and sighed, leaning into the comforting solidity of Nil’s shoulder. “I know, I know,” she replied quietly. Nil had been reassuring her on an almost daily basis that she would get GAIA up and running eventually, but as time went on, she was believing him less and less. 

“And remember the rumours of new machines,” Nil continued in his deep and soothing voice. “Think of the trophies you’ll take back to the Lodge. Talanah will have to fight you to keep her post.” 

Aloy finally gave Nil a genuine smile and pushed him playfully with her shoulder. “I told you, I don’t want to be the Sunhawk. Talanah is much more suited to it than me.” She twined her fingers in Nil’s and turned back to Luka. “Do you have any advice for us as we travel north?” 

Luka gave them a melancholy smile. “I’m probably the last person you should ask for advice about travelling in the Cut, all things considered. But I can send you off with a blessing.”

Nil snorted. “No thanks.”

Luka grinned and threw another rock at him, which hit him in the chest this time. “Fine, no blessing for _you_. Aloy?” Luka tilted her head quizzically at Aloy.

Aloy shrugged amiably. “Thanks, Luka. That would be nice.” Aloy didn’t need to believe in any tribe’s religion in order to appreciate the sentiment. 

Luka reached into one of the pouches around her waist and pulled out a small handful of powder, which she threw into the fire. Abruptly the flames transformed from a warm orange into a brilliant, electric blue. Luka closed her eyes and lifted her chin, then took a deep breath as she sank into a meditative state. 

Aloy lifted her knees to her chin and folded her arms around them as she waited patiently for Luka to speak again. She enjoyed the feel of Nil’s idle fingers combing through her hair while she quietly watched Luka’s slow breathing. 

Slowly Luka opened her eyes, and a small chill ran down Aloy’s spine: Luka’s sloe-black eyes seemed oddly empty as she gazed into the fire.

“Blue light glistens in the air. It falls heavy on the hearts of machine and flesh alike. Its chill is the way of things, the way of survival.” Suddenly Luka’s vacant gaze latched onto Aloy’s face. “Ribbons of rage wash away the chill. A life born and fostered and quashed to a mere spark, entrapped in the shadow of the rage. A ridgewood tree split in two, each branch strong in its own right but missing the other. This is what you will face.” 

Goosebumps rippled over Aloy’s skin. There was no way to know if Luka’s premonitions were true, but if Brin’s visions were anything to go by, Aloy was certain there was wisdom in Luka’s words, if only she could parse it out. 

Luka blinked twice, then slowly shook her head and took a deep breath. When she finally smiled at Aloy and Nil, her smile was as enigmatic as the mysteries in her eyes. “Enjoy your journey,” she said softly. “Stay safe, my friends.”

Nil huffed with amusement, breaking the mysterious tension. He stood from the bench and pulled Aloy up with him. “I’ll bring you a souvenir from your homeland,” he told Luka with an irreverent smirk. “A bandit’s tooth talisman, maybe? You could use it in your little rituals.”

Luka stood as well and punched Nil in the shoulder before hugging him gently. “Don’t be stupid. I know you don’t collect trophies from your kills.” She turned and hugged Aloy as well. “I don’t need to tell you this, but take care of him,” Luka whispered to Aloy. “He’s-” 

“-a cavalier idiot, I know,” Aloy murmured back, and the two women laughed, then Aloy and Nil took their leave.

Aloy whistled for two Broadheads. As she and Nil headed towards Daytower at a brisk gait, Aloy turned to Nil. “You don’t think anything Luka said is true?”

Nil smirked and shrugged. “Whether it’s true or not isn’t the point. Acting on vague premonitions is what makes them true. And every priest and shaman loves a self-fulfilling prophecy.” He shot her a self-satisfied grin. “I prefer to carve my own path through life and let the bloody consequences fall where they may.”

Aloy smiled back at Nil and relaxed. Her bloodthirsty husband might be unplanned chaos personified, but he made a good point. _Better to make your own path than to try and follow the path hinted by someone else,_ Aloy thought. 

But sometimes, with GAIA Prime so still and quiet and dark, Aloy couldn’t help but wonder what her path was supposed to be.

She shook her head briskly. _Forget that for now,_ she scolded herself. A new adventure and fresh territory was laid wide in front of them, and despite her disappointment about GAIA, Aloy felt a jolt of excitement.

She grinned at Nil. “Come on, let’s race,” she said, and kicked her Broadhead’s sides. 

Nil’s chuckle followed her along with his voice. “Cheater! You had a head start!” he called. 

Aloy grinned and didn’t bother to reply as the hot desert wind whipped her hair around her face. She knew Nil didn’t really mind her head start. 

After all, he was always just one easy step behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I changed Luka’s backstory a tiny bit since it turns out that the Banuk are chill with women being shamans after all. HAHA. But I feel like the Lauvak at the Hunting Ground hints at some gender inequality bullshit in some of the older weraks, so I played off of that. You can check back here for the changes.


	2. Outlanders

Aloy gasped for breath and doubled over, her hands on her trembling knees. “Daemonic Scorcher is right,” she panted to Nil. He shook his head slightly and smirked at her before sitting heavily in the snow.

Aloy glared at the sparking remains of the foreign machine. Yariki hadn’t been kidding with her implicit warning to turn around and go back. But Aloy couldn’t help but feel satisfied with their kill. “These new machines might not be so bad, right?” she called to Nil as she limped over to the Scorcher’s inert form. “Not if they’re all like this one.” She kicked lightly at the dead Scorcher with her warmly booted foot. 

Nil looked up at her and shoved his sweat-damp hair from his forehead. “Don’t tempt fate,” he grunted. Then he pulled out his golden flask and took a fortifying swig. 

Aloy smirked as she pried the Scorcher’s lens from the casing. “I thought you didn’t believe in fate,” she teased. “Make your own path and all that.” She slowly walked over to the nearest Banuk torch and inspected the lens curiously in the torch’s glowing blue light. 

Like all machine lenses, it was round; it was as large as a Ravager’s lens but twice as thick, and yet surprisingly light. Aloy pocketed the lens and turned back to join Nil in the snow.

“I _don’t_ believe in fate,” he replied. He passed her his Scrappersap flask, and Aloy took a grateful gulp. “But if some vague idea of fate can save us from dealing with more of these fucking nightmares…” He trailed off as he caught sight of Aloy’s smirk. “What are you smiling about?”

Aloy chuckled, and she leaned against Nil in exhaustion. “We’ve been here for five minutes and we’re already on our asses,” she wheezed. “This is going to be a long honeymoon.” And suddenly she was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

Nil slung his arm around her, and Aloy felt his tired chuckle through his chest. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Just you and me, and this devil beast that spews fire… Very romantic.”

“Stop,” Aloy begged, wrapping her arms around her belly. Her diaphragm was starting to hurt. She lounged on her back in the snow, and Nil lay down beside her. 

Finally Aloy caught her breath, only to lose it again as she gazed up at the sky. “Wow,” she whispered.

“It is something,” Nil agreed quietly. 

Streamers of green and violet light were strung across the stars, wavering and dancing like ribbons in a river. The slow, undulating dance of foreign lights in the sky was almost hypnotizing in its beauty. In all her life, everything she’d seen from the Sacred Lands to the Sundom, Aloy had never seen anything like this. 

Nil’s fingers slid over Aloy’s cold palm, and she squeezed his hand tightly. The air was icy, but somehow she felt warm, heated from the inside by something hotter than fire: the burning drive for discovery and adventure... and the thrill of having Nil by her side to share in the excitement.

With a soft crunch of snow, Nil rolled towards her, bracing his weight over supine form. He had deigned to dress himself appropriately in a strange intertribal mix of winter clothing, and Aloy missed the customary heat of his body, but his breath was warm as it fanned her face. “Welcome to the Cut, Suntress,” he whispered. Then he lowered his face to hers.

His nose was cold, but his lips were as hot as blazefire as he tasted her mouth. Aloy slid her hand into his hooded cowl and warmed her fingers on the back of his neck as his kiss warmed her blood. 

Nil gave a tiny hiss at the touch of her frozen fingers and nipped her lips lightly in punishment, and Aloy smiled. “Come on. Let’s see what else the Cut has in store for us,” she whispered against his lips. 

Nil smirked. “I need to warm up first,” he purred, then slid his fingers under the hem of her Banuk icehunter coat. 

Aloy squeaked in surprise and wriggled as Nil’s cold fingertips wormed their way along her ribs. “Nil! Cut it out!” She gave a tiny shriek of laughter as Nil buried his cold nose in her neck, then swiftly she grabbed a small handful of snow and shoved it into his hood. 

Nil hissed again and rolled away from her, and Aloy hopped to her feet with a grin. 

“It’s one thing to lie in the snow. This is just cruel,” Nil growled as he tried to scrape the snow from the inside of his hood. Aloy laughed and gently kicked some snow at him, then spun on her heel and began to run up the blue-lit path towards the settlement. “Come on, Carja! Let’s go!” she shouted over her shoulder. 

Aloy’s hunter spirit had been roused, and she was more than ready for an adventure now.

*********************

“Good luck in the Cut, outlanders. Not that you’ll be staying long.”

Aloy gave the Banuk guard a polite nod, but she couldn’t help but frown slightly. The guard’s tone was so bland that Aloy couldn’t decide if he was being rude or not. She shot Nil a quizzical look, and he shrugged unconcernedly. 

They strolled into Song’s Edge and automatically segued into their usual behaviour in settlements: Aloy nodded politely to everyone and greeted anyone who spoke to her, while Nil loomed unsmiling at her shoulder.

Though she didn’t like it, Aloy was well accustomed now to the attention that her unusual hair seemed to attract, not to mention her relationship with Nil. She knew that intertribal unions were rare, particularly since everyone identified her as one of the notoriously suspicious Nora; she and Nil were used to being stared at and commented on as though they were goods for sale at a market. But the faint hostility emanating from the Banuk felt… _different_ somehow from the usual unwelcome attention they garnered. Maybe she’d been spending so much time with the friendly Oseram that she’d forgotten what it was like to be disliked on sight. 

None of the residents of Song’s Edge were openly unkind, really; it was just something about the look in their eyes: a flatness to their gaze as it slid over her and Nil. Their faces really did seem as cold as the weather. But Aloy’s Oseram and Carja acquaintances had warned her that the Banuk preferred to keep to themselves, after all. She supposed this was particularly true of the Banuk who never travelled south. 

Eventually they made their way to a small rise that led down to a path onto a jutting ridge, and Aloy’s eyes widened: a large group of Banuk were gathered in somber silence, watching three shamans engaged in some kind of ritual. 

“You’ve come at a bad time, outlanders.” Aloy turned to face the weary-looking older Banuk who had addressed them. “We’ve taken heavy losses. It’s not a good time for a journey to the Cut.” 

Aloy nodded a polite acknowledgment, but her ever-present curiosity was inexorably captivated by the goings-on below. She gestured towards the crowd. “Can we…?”

The weary-looking Banuk shrugged acquiescence, and eagerly Aloy trotted down the path towards the crowd with Nil on her heels. Gently she pushed her way through the assembled Banuk so she could have a clear view.

She was briefly distracted by a boisterous huff of surprise to her left. She glanced over to see an Oseram gentleman gazing at her and Nil with friendly curiosity. He leaned towards her and lowered his voice. “Get ready for a rare sight, Nora. Most of the time the Banuk burn their dead, but not today.”

Aloy frowned slightly for a moment, then understanding clicked into her brain. “Because the bodies couldn’t be recovered?” she asked. 

The Oseram nodded. “Aye. A nasty business: all their best warriors, lost. So they’re getting a different kind of send-off.”

Aloy nodded acknowledgment, then watched with avid curiosity as the three shamans chanted and stomped with increasing fervour, culminating in one of them blowing on a huge ceremonial horn. The horn’s note was deep and resonant, thrumming through Aloy’s chest like a throbbing heartbeat, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck lifted at the sound. 

Instinctively she reached for Nil’s hand, and he squeezed her fingers. Then a familiar and _strongly_ disliked metallic cry rent the air, and Aloy’s sharp gaze shot to the sky.

Three Glinthawks were swooping down towards the assembled Banuk. Aloy looked around in alarm, but the Banuk were all utterly unconcerned as they stared up at the approaching machines. Nil squeezed her hand again, and she forced herself to relax, realizing that this must be part of… whatever ritual this was. 

Then Aloy looked more closely at the Glinthawks, and her shoulders lost the rest of their tension, even as her heart lifted with curiosity: the metal birds’ eyes were the placid blue of a tamed machine. Gracefully the Glinthawks swept low and snatched three small human effigies from the huge wood-and-ribbon structure at the edge of the rise, then wheeled in a smooth arc and flew away.

Aloy released her breath and smiled up at Nil. “The shamans can override Glinthawks with a horn?” she whispered to him in wonder. 

“It seems that way,” he replied. Then he shrugged dismissively. “I like your way better. A horn doesn’t have the same sense of drama as a spear.”

Aloy nudged Nil chidingly with her shoulder, but she couldn't help but smile. Then her attention was captured anew by a large, grizzled Banuk man who slowly walked over to face the assembled crowd.

The Oseram at Aloy’s left leaned towards them again. “That’s the Chieftain, Aratak,” he murmured to Aloy. She nodded her thanks just as Aratak began to speak.

“Grasp your grief, my hunters, and kill it. For our kin seized the fate all Banuk long for: falling with their spears striking steel.” Aratak gazed unsmiling at his people, and Aloy was certain that she’d never seen anyone so serious. “Their struggle is over now,” Aratak continued. “You have witnessed their spirits rise up into the blue sky and beyond to the Blue Light. But our struggle is only beginning. Soon we will again take up the hunt against the Daemon that frenzies the machines against us. And so I ask you: can you summon the courage of our fallen kin? Will you fight and die as well as they did?”

Aloy frowned. _That is the least inspiring speech I’ve ever heard,_ she thought. But the Banuk seemed to disagree; none of them hesitated to raise their spears overhead, their cries of assent rising in the frosty air. 

“My courage, my spear!”

“Our blood is in your teeth, Aratak!”

Then Nil’s voice was in her ear. “These are my kind of people, Suntress. Bloodthirsty to a man,” he murmured. 

Aloy snorted and crossed her arms. “I don’t think it’s human blood they’re thirsty for, Nil.” 

Then Aratak’s booming voice rang out once more. “We are Banuk! Our enemies are prey!” 

Nil chuckled. “ _Definitely_ my kind of people,” he purred. 

Aloy craned her neck back to smirk at him. “Careful now. You might start liking someone who isn’t me.” 

“Not a chance,” Nil replied smoothly, and Aloy grinned and leaned back against him. 

The assembled Banuk began to disperse and return to their regular activities; for most of them, this seemed to involve training for the battle to come. The Oseram man turned to Aloy and Nil with a grin. “Now that that’s done! I’m Burgrend: purveyor of necessities,” he announced. “And you are?”

“I’m Aloy. This is Nil, my partner,” Aloy said. 

Burgrend eyed them with open curiosity. “Hunting partner, or…?”

“Hunting partner and husband,” Nil said bluntly. Possessively he slid his hand up Aloy’s back into her hair and murmured to her, “I’ll go inspect these Banuk fighters. See if Luka can put her shards where her mouth is. Tell me if you need me.” 

Aloy nodded, and Nil wandered over towards a group of sparring Banuk about thirty paces away. Aloy turned back to Burgrend. “A Daemon that frenzies the machines, they say?” she asked. She was accustomed to the Oseram’s over-friendly nosiness, and she just _knew_ that if she gave Burgrend an opening into her and Nil’s business, he would want to gossip for hours. 

Burgrend’s eyes sparkled, but he followed her conversational lead. “That’s right. Machines that wiped out their best. And what do they want to do? Go back up there! Fools.” He waved his arm towards the smoke-belching mountain on the horizon, then shook his head ruefully. “It started with one of their shamans, Ourea, spouting on about spirits and Daemons up on Thunder’s Drum. So they marched their werak up there, and half of them get slaughtered by machines.”

Aloy frowned as Burgrend continued the tale. “When Ourea vanished, I thought the crazy might have vanished with her, but no. Here’s big Aratak, gearing them up to do it all over again!” 

Aloy shifted her weight thoughtfully. “So Ourea was the one to speak about this Daemon. What exactly did she see?”

Burgrend shook his head. “I don’t know what Ourea found up there. A shaman’s not going to talk to an outlander.” He shot her a pointed glance, but Aloy shrugged neutrally; being an outlander had never stopped her from getting answers before. “I want to know more about this Daemon,” she said firmly. 

Burgrend shook his head vehemently. “Nuh-uh. It’s crazy talk, Aloy!” 

“Or there’s something to it,” Aloy insisted. “Something connecting to the way the machines behave.” Frankly, it sounded to her like some kind of corruption, and if that was the case, Aloy _definitely_ wanted to know more.

Burgrend sighed heavily and gazed at her with exasperation. “Then you need to find Ourea,” he said finally. “She was last seen headed for the mountains they call the Icerasps. I’ve heard only the shamans know the trail beyond those frozen peaks… but I do know where you could find her apprentice, Naltuk. He went north of the river chasing rumours.”

Aloy tilted her head with fresh curiosity. “Rumours?”

Burgrend looked at her hopelessly, and Aloy almost laughed; she was starting to get the distinct impression that her intrepid spirit was worrying Burgrend in an oddly paternal way. “Not the good kind,” he said sternly. “Sudden attacks in the snow, strange new structures… Some say a new machine, like no one’s ever seen before.”

Aloy perked up. “Well, now I’m definitely interested. Thanks for the information, Burgrend,” she said. 

A loud uproar of jeering and clapping rose from the training Banuk, and Aloy and Burgrend turned to look: a group of young Banuk hunters were standing in a circle around one of their brethren, whom Nil had pinned to the ground with his knife at the young hunter’s neck. 

Aloy smirked and shook her head as Nil flipped his knife and stood up to let the young hunter rise to his feet. The small group of Banuk mostly ignored Nil as they shook their heads chidingly and jeered at their defeated comrade, but naturally, Nil didn’t mind being ignored; in fact, he was grinning ferally, looking distinctly like he was enjoying himself. 

Aloy surreptitiously tapped her Focus and turned away from Burgrend. “Having a good time?” she said quietly. The one thing she _had_ managed to figure out in the past few months was how to get her Focus and Nil’s to connect to each other. They were able to speak through their Focuses, share scanned files, and detect each other’s Focus signals, but only over a short distance of approximately 100 paces. It wasn’t ideal - Aloy still wanted to set up a cross-territory network like the one that had connected the Eclipse - but it was a start, and it came in handy sometimes, especially when hunting.

A circle of blue light appeared at Nil’s right ear, and Aloy smiled as his reply filtered through her Focus into her ear. “Oh yes. It pains me to admit it, but Luka was right. These Banuk do know how to fight. I hope there are bandits here. They’ll be _extremely_ satisfying to bleed dry.” 

Aloy rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh,” she said wryly, then tapped her Focus off and turned back to find Burgrend staring at her with fresh awe. 

“You’re the Nora who saved Meridian, aren’t you? I recognize you now.” His eyes darted between Aloy’s Focus and her spear, and he smacked himself in the forehead. “I am a lunkhead, that’s for sure - I heard stories of you from the Claim! It’s not like there’s a redheaded Nora around every corner, is there? And one with a Shadow Carja prince for a husband? Hammer to steel, I am a fool.” He chuckled, then folded his arms as he gazed at Aloy admiringly. “The Banuk are in for a treat now that _you’re_ here. Go on then, tell me your tales, Aloy! I’ve been starved for a good story out in this cold!”

“You first,” Aloy said hastily, slightly dismayed at his recognition. Despite her so-called fame in the Sundom and the Sacred Lands - or perhaps because of it - Aloy still didn’t like to talk about herself. “What brings an Oseram merchant to the frozen wilds?”

Luckily her diversion was successful, and Aloy chatted with Burgrend for a while longer. She was intrigued to discover that Burgrend had heard of Sylens - _I knew he was Banuk!_ Aloy thought triumphantly - and that Sylens seemed to have gotten on the wrong side of the more powerful shamans in Ban-Ur. Eventually Aloy bade Burgrend farewell and curiously wandered over to Aratak. She waited at a respectful distance as Aratak spoke sternly to two of his people, then slowly approached him. 

Aratak glanced at her briefly as he adjusted his weapon, which looked like a modified spear or staff with a flexible sac of chillwater fused to it. “I suppose you wish to speak?” he said bluntly. 

Aloy raised her eyebrows at his dismissive tone, but she decided to let it ride. “Yes, thank you,” she said politely. “This Daemon you talk about…”

Aratak tightened the wires on his strange weapon. “If you are hardy enough, you can venture out and see the signs yourself. It makes the machines fiercer, stronger.”

“But what is it?” Aloy asked. It really was starting to sound like a kind of corruption to her, but she wanted to know what the Banuk thought. 

Unfortunately, Aratak did not seem much like the thinking kind. “It is a matter for the shamans to debate,” he replied. Then he segued back into a dour silence. 

Aloy raised her eyebrows again and folded her arms. “Ourea knows about this Daemon. Where would I talk to her?” 

Finally Aratak lowered his weapon and stared at Aloy with narrowed eyes. “Ourea does a shaman’s work. That is not for the eyes and ears of others, and certainly not an outlander’s.” He shot a disparaging glance at her obviously Nora hairstyle, then returned his attention to his weapon. 

Aloy huffed and unfolded her arms. “I guess that’s all I’m going to get,” she muttered to herself, then stalked over towards Nil. 

Nil was engaged in another sparring match. Aloy watched and chatted quietly with the surrounding Banuk until Nil used the huntress’s own spear to flip her onto her back. The surrounding Banuk jeered again, but this time a few of them patted Nil on the shoulder and nodded approval as he handed the huntress’s weapon back to her. 

Aloy smiled as Nil strutted over to her, looking exceedingly pleased. “You’re getting to know the locals better than I am,” she said playfully, but it was actually true: whether he’d meant to or not, Nil had seamlessly joined in with the Banuk’s activities. He seemed more at home here than she had ever seen him be anywhere in the Sundom. 

Nil slung an arm around her shoulder and kissed her noisily on the temple. “They speak my language. There’s a saying here: either you’re the best, or you accept failure. There’s nothing in between.”

Aloy pressed her lips together and huffed. Of course Nil would agree with something like that. “Who said that?”

Nil shrugged easily. “Oh, some hunter I fought. Guess what they had to accept?”

Aloy chuckled and playfully pushed him away. “Uh-huh. Well, if you’ve had enough sparring with your new friends, I’ve heard about some new machines out in the wilds. Are you up for some exploring?”

Nil smiled. “Of course. The path ahead may be caked with ice, but we’ll warm it with a trail of blood: I heard there’s a camp of bandits in the northeast.” 

Aloy shook her head fondly as Nil hummed pleasantly to himself. It was seeming more and more like the Cut was the perfect honeymoon spot, boasting something for both her and Nil: discovery and death.


	3. Ethos

Aloy chatted with a few more villagers, including the notorious painter Sekuli and a young musician named Laulai, who pointed Aloy towards yet another tantalizing mystery near a place called Deep Din. While leaving Song’s Edge, they stopped at the base of the path so Aloy could gape at a beautiful multicoloured pool of water, which some Banuk artisans were using to dye clothing. It was early afternoon by the time she and Nil finally headed off the beaten path and into the wilds of the Cut. 

Usually she and Nil travelled by mount, but Aloy wanted to explore these foreign lands thoroughly, so they set out on foot. Aloy was delighted when her Focus picked out some new animals she had never seen before; animals that were better suited to the cold, perhaps? She gazed in amazement at a strange, hooting bird that her Focus identified as an owl, then she and Nil hunted a few of these strange birds. They gathered the meat, then collected the bones and speckled feathers to trade. 

Aloy and Nil were quiet as they treaded lightly through the snowy woods. She inhaled deeply of the frigid air and lifted her face to the gentle fall of snow. Nil had always teased her about the Nora’s territory being the land of green and white, but the Sacred Lands had nothing on the Cut. There were few places in the Sacred Lands that saw as much snow as the Cut, and Aloy kept wondering about those fascinating ribbons of green light in the night sky. Did that strange light appear every night?

“You look happy,” Nil remarked. Aloy opened her eyes and smiled at him. “I am,” she confirmed, then stretched her arms luxuriously over her head. “It’s nice to travel somewhere new. It’s been a long time.” The last time she and Nil had gone to uncharted territory was their trip to the Utaru lands, and that was hardly under relaxing circumstances. Aloy was pleased to have a new quest to pursue with this Daemon business, but she was looking forward to some unstructured exploring as well. 

Nil hummed in agreement as he stepped close to her and tipped her chin back gently. “It has,” he murmured. “I’d forgotten how delicately a snowflake can burn over the scorching heat of your freckles. It’s exquisite.” 

Aloy’s smile widened as she slid her arms around Nil’s hooded neck and accepted the gentle brushing of his lips over hers. His kiss was as light and ethereal as the falling snow, and Aloy savoured the taste of his tongue as much as she savoured the hushed sound of the gentle winter wind blowing through the pine trees. 

The faint sound of yelling voices broke the mood, followed by the not-so-faint sound of a Charger’s groaning roar. Aloy reluctantly turned away from Nil and tapped her Focus: a group of Banuk hunters was attacking a herd of five Chargers not too far away. 

She turned back to Nil and jerked her head in the direction of the hunting party. “Let’s go lend a hand?”

Nil shrugged amiably. “Lead the way.”

Together they ran towards the ruckus of yelling voices and screeching metal, and not a moment too soon: one of the hunters had been kicked down by a Charger and was about to be trampled, unbeknownst to her comrades who were occupied with the other machines. 

Aloy swiftly grabbed her bow and shot two precision arrows at the Charger’s eye. The arrows slammed home, and the Charger’s angry trample was thrown off by the impact, stunning the metal beast and knocking it onto its side. 

Aloy and Nil split up and flanked the hunters and the remaining machines. Aloy slammed her spearpoint into one Charger, then rolled away from the sparking carcass and nodded to Nil, who was crouched over another destroyed Charger with a handful of torn wires dangling from his fist. 

The Banuk hunters finished off the remaining three Chargers and racked their weapons on their backs and hips. Then, without even touching the resource-rich machines littering the ground, they began to walk away. 

“We can do better. We _must_ do better,” one of the Banuk grunted to his comrades. He glanced very briefly at her and Nil, but his blue eyes were as flat and neutral as the frozen puddles on the ground. Without even a word of farewell, the Banuk continued on their way. 

Aloy stared after them with amazement and a little resentment. She didn’t need to be thanked, but an acknowledgment of her existence would have been nice. But what she really resented was the Banuk’s wastefulness. “They don’t even bother to loot their kills?” she snapped, then kneeled beside the closest Charger corpse and began stripping it for parts. “What’s point of killing these machines if they’re going to let the resources go to waste?” 

Nil hunkered down beside her and took the resources she handed him. “For the challenge,” he said. “The satisfaction of knowing they were capable. You took that away from them.”

Aloy whipped around to stare at Nil. “The challenge? That one huntress would have died if we hadn’t intervened. You think she was willing to die for a _challenge?_ ”

Nil shrugged and neatly pried some shards from the Charger’s chassis. “Yes,” he said simply. 

Aloy gazed wide-eyed at Nil as he continued to pick the resources from the Charger. “So you think I shouldn’t have intervened.” 

“I didn’t say that,” Nil said mildly. “But I heard those hunters talking at Song’s Edge. These Banuk say that if you can’t survive, you don’t deserve to live. It’s a harsh and brutal way to live.” He shot her a sideways little smirk. “This might just be my kind of place.” 

Aloy wrinkled her nose slightly, but she didn’t contradict him. She knew that Nil personally believed in survival of the fittest. But she also found it very interesting that he seemed so comfortable with the Banuk ethos. Usually Aloy was the one blending in with the other tribes, while Nil stuck out stubbornly like a sore thumb. 

Finally Aloy heaved a sigh and resumed plundering the downed Charger. “Fine,” she said bad-temperedly. “If people want to die for no good reason, they can feel free. I’ll just… sit back and watch.”

Nil snickered as he rolled a coil of wire and tucked it into her belt pouch. “That will be _your_ challenge: sitting back and letting events unfold on their own. I don’t think it’s possible.”

Aloy huffed, irritated because Nil wasn’t wrong: she’d never been one to just sit back when help was needed. But she’d also never been in a position for her help to not be _wanted_ before. 

She folded her arms irately, and Nil laughed. “Come here,” he said, then he pulled her back into his lap and nuzzled her cheek with his cold nose. 

Aloy wanted to continue brooding, but she couldn’t help but laugh at Nil’s exuberance. He really did seem happy here. She heaved a big sigh and relaxed into his embrace, listening to the strange bleating of the goats in the forest and the haunting hoots of owls. 

Nil brushed his lips over the curve of her ear, and the warmth of his mouth sent a shiver down her spine. Gently he nipped her earlobe, then in a low, intimate voice, he whispered, “Good. You’re done pouting. Are you ready to move on?”

Aloy snorted and wiggled out of his arms, ignoring the butterflies of heat that had taken flight in her belly. “Cheeky slag,” she muttered. “Okay okay, _yes,_ let’s finish looting these Chargers and we’ll go.” 

As she and Nil finished collecting blaze and wire from the downed herd of machines, Aloy mused about the Banuk and their lands. So far, the Cut and its people were well-matched: striking and beautiful, but ice-cold and impenetrable at the same time. It didn’t seem like the Cut was going to warm up anytime soon… and Aloy wondered if its people would be the same. 

***************

Nil sauntered contentedly along the snowy path as he and Suntress headed towards the Greycatch to investigate the source of the flooded basin. He shoved his cold fingers deep into the pockets of his Banuk pants and savoured the sight of Suntress’s swaying hips as she walked just in front of him, brushing her fingers over the red-tipped grass and lifting her face to the paltry warmth of the sun.

Nil was deeply enjoying how sparsely populated these Banuk lands seemed to be. Aside from the odd group of Banuk hunters, there seemed to be very few people outside of Song’s Edge. It was so nice and quiet without the constant chuntering of disgruntled villagers and complaining soldiers, and _finally_ , for what felt like the first time in months - in years, maybe - he had Suntress to himself. 

Nil had to admit, though, that he didn’t mind these Banuk. They weren’t friendly by any means; most of their faces looked like they were carved from stone. He could tell that many of them - especially the older Banuk - still hated the Carja, so nobody tried to talk to him. It was very pleasant. 

It was also strangely pleasant to realize that there were other people in the world who seemed to share his general outlook on life. He hadn’t realized that the Banuk prized strength and survival so highly. Nil enjoyed the frenzied bloodlust of the Tenakth, but the Banuk had a quiet, controlled brand of violence that Nil respected. 

Only now did Nil realize how different Luka really was from the rest of her people. As fond of her as he was, he understood now why she’d left Ban-Ur. She wouldn’t have survived here for long. 

Nil followed Suntress across a bridge and towards a huge, rectangular pillar that seemed to support an enormous smooth-stoned wall. At the base of the pillar was a roughly blasted hole where a door should have been. Suntress peered at the hole, then threw Nil a wry look. “Well, _somebody_ wanted in. Nearly blew the ledge off just to get through this door.” 

Nil snorted. “The work of desperation. I’m surprised the perpetrator didn’t leave a limb behind.”

Suntress nodded agreement, then she and Nil slipped inside the structure. Almost immediately, Nil felt a change in temperature; it was considerably warmer inside the Greycatch, and Suntress sighed in relief. 

Nil smirked. “The cold is getting to you, Suntress?”

She smoothed her hair back from her face and smiled wryly. “I didn’t think I’d miss the heat of the Sundom, but I actually do,” she admitted. “What about you? You’re not bothered by the cold at all?”

“No,” Nil replied. “These clothes, yes. But the cold, no.” He plucked at his heavy leather vest with disdain. Nil had grown up wearing silks and linen, and he disliked the weight of these Banuk and Nora fabrics. In addition to the Banuk boots and gloves from Luka, Suntress had forced him to buy a pair of fur-lined Banuk pants, a long-sleeved Oseram shirt and leather vest, and a fur-lined hooded Nora cowl, all in shades of dark green and brown. He felt like he was wearing a stupid costume.

Suntress snickered, then hopped on a ladder and started to climb rapidly. “If it makes you feel any better, I think your hood is cute.” 

Nil gave her a _very_ skeptical look and followed her up the ladder. Suddenly, a smooth synthetic voice sounded overhead: “Flooding detected. Evacuation recommended. Overflow basin compromised.” 

“The overflow basin… is that the Din?” Suntress wondered. She and Nil wandered into a large open room that Nil now recognized as a control center of the Old Ones. Suntress prowled around the room, examining the holo locks and control panel, muttering to herself busily. Meanwhile, Nil wandered idly over to an abandoned device lying on a chair and scanned it with his Focus. 

Two female voices shivered into life in his ear. _“All right, so, okay, like… How do we want to start this farewell thingy?”_

A second, gentler voice replied. _“We might be the last people to ever see this place.”_

 _“Uh, yeah. Hence, you know, the songs?”_ chirped the first voice.

Nil shrugged; maybe Suntress would be interested in these audio datapoints later. Then he noticed a metal door that stood slightly ajar. “Suntress. Through here,” he called. 

With a frown of concentration, she turned away from the ominously flashing control panel and joined him by the door. Then she and Nil both recoiled with surprise as a loud voice floated through the crack in the door. “ _Help!_ I’ve become trapped somehow! By the forge, I’m pleased to hear another person stomping about in here! This blasted door is stuck!”

Nil slumped in exasperation. “An Oseram?” he complained. Most of the Oseram were so fucking _garrulous_. 

“Be nice,” Suntress scolded, but her tiny smile erased the stern tone of her voice. Together they jogged down the stairs, and Suntress deftly twisted her fingers over the holo-lock and opened the door. 

Sure enough, an Oseram man fell through the door and flat on his face. Nil curled his lip in disgust as Suntress helped the man to his feet. He grinned at them both. “Hah! You don’t know how happy you’ve just made me!” He beamed at Suntress. “For a moment I thought my fire was snuffed, my forge gone cold, but nope. Nope! Not old Gildun.” He grinned, looking like an overgrown child, then turned and wandered back into the room from which he’d just escaped. 

_What the fuck?_ Nil thought in annoyance. As always, Suntress was considerably more polite. “Wait wait, start from the beginning,” she said hastily. “What are you doing down here?”

Gildun turned back to Suntress and bowed slightly. “My apologies. When you mostly talk to yourself, you can tell your stories in whatever order you like! There’s an artifact in that storage room I simply _must_ acquire, but as you may have noticed, the door is stuck.” Gildun waved his arms emphatically as he spoke, and Nil unconsciously stepped back, feeling overwhelmed by his enthusiasm. “I took one of those roundish ringy whats-its from the wall beside the door: no luck. So I had a go at that panel with the button: even less luck. My gentle experimentation caused the chamber to... flood a little. So I pushed the button again, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. Sparks and smoke! Heh.”

Nil folded his arms and stared flatly at Gildun as he beamed at Suntress, who was rubbing a hand over her face in exasperation. “Obviously I came here to investigate,” Gildun continued. “My… cautious footsteps may have contributed _slightly_ to the collapse of the bridge. And when the bridge began to collapse, I may have, for the sake of expedience, abandoned the cumbersome ringy whats-it to the waves. By the time I got to give up the endeavour, the door had closed behind me. And thusly do we come to the present moment.” 

Nil had heard enough. He turned away from the noisy Oseram and wandered further into the room, and idly he turned on his Focus to read the datapoint that accompanied the audio file he’d scanned upstairs. It wasn’t that interesting - something about leaving memories behind and acoustics and ‘basic income’, whatever that meant - but it was better than listening to the Oseram blathering on. 

Then Suntress spoke, and her voice had the businesslike tone that Nil associated with action. “Well, there’s no way we’re getting into that storage room without another ring. It’s part of the locking mechanism that controls the door. So we need to replace that ring, get into the storage room, then I can fix the panel and shut this place down.”

 _Finally, something to do,_ Nil thought, and meandered back to her side. 

“And I can finally wrap my fingers around that looking glass!” Gildun exclaimed. 

Suntress shifted her weight from one hip to the other and looked at Gildun expectantly. “Okay, Gildun. How are we going to get that ring?”

Suddenly Gilden lunged towards her, and Nil pulled his knife out of its sheath in startlement as Gildun grabbed Suntress’s wrists and shook them enthusiastically. “Two sets of hands, girl. Two sets of hands!” He released her wrists and waved grandly over his shoulder. “Behind us lie an enormous set of gates, but I believe these gates have to be operated in tandem. Together we can dry this place out!” Then he turned to Nil with a warm smile, apparently oblivious to Nil’s threatening glower and the knife in his hand. “ _Three_ sets of hands, even! This is a grand fortune indeed. You look like you could lend us some useful muscle mass, boy!” To Nil’s great dismay, Gildun grabbed his shoulder and shook it enthusiastically. 

Hastily Nil shrugged Gildun’s hand off and slid over to stand behind Suntress. She patted his forearm distractedly. “Guess we’d better get started, then,” she said, and they followed Gildun along the metal walkway. 

Nil was disgruntled. He’d been looking forward to leaving the Oseram behind for a while during this honeymoon, and what should they find in the Cut but the noisiest Oseram Nil had ever had the misfortune to meet? Gildun was so fucking _irritating_ that Nil almost missed Suntress’s friend Erend. At least Erend had good taste in liquor and knew how to crack a man’s skull.

They approached the first valve control, and Gildun pointed to a second valve on the opposite walkway, separated from them by the gushing flow of water. “Do you mind doing the honours? I thought I saw some kind of tunnel on the upper level - might provide a means to cross the gap!”

Suntress nodded briskly then vaulted up the ladder, and Nil didn’t hesitate to follow her; there was no fucking chance he was staying behind with Gildun. As Suntress crouched to enter the tunnel, Gildun’s loud voice floated up to them: “You know, I’m reminded of a delve I undertook out near the Claim. A stone ruin, cloud-tall and lake-wide…”

Nil suddenly took hold of Suntress’s shoulders and looked intently into her face. “Suntress. I will carve the flesh from his cavernous mouth if he doesn’t close it soon. The melody of his cries of pain will put this idle talk to shame.” 

Suntress grinned and squeezed his forearms encouragingly. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. Why don’t you, um… listen to something on your Focus instead? I saw you scan a datapad in the control room. See if you can find any more.”

Nil growled petulantly, but obediently he followed her through the dank tunnel and down another ladder until they reached the valve. The sluice gate closed, prompting another outburst of joyful nattering from the delver. 

It was too much. Nil tapped his Focus on, then looped the audio datapoint he’d scanned so it would play on repeat. As Nil, Suntress and Gildun worked their way through the facility, Nil followed Suntress’s suggestion and scanned each datapad that his Focus detected, then played all the recordings on a loop in order to drown out Gildun’s booming voice. 

It wasn’t long before Nil had essentially memorized the content of all the Greycatch audio files. He liked the longest one. It seemed like it was supposed to be a song, but it just sounded like two women yelling angrily with some grating noise in the background: 

_You make the world so hard to live in_  
_Then act like we should crave a spot_  
_But if we're not good enough for your world_  
_We think your world can rot_

_Trapped in servitor hell_  
_We still know our worth_  
_Meat and bone don't sell_  
_We're the last girls on earth_

Nil listened to this particular file about ten times before Suntress and Gildun finally managed to get the storage room open. Nil set about to looting crates, but a moment later, Suntress poked him hard in the ribs.

He tapped his Focus off and frowned. “What?”

“You’re humming,” Suntress whispered. She bit her lips, clearly trying not to laugh. 

“Oh,” Nil said. He glanced at Gildun, who was grinning at him. “Not much of a talker, but you’ve got a good singing voice on you,” the Oseram proclaimed. “You must have been raised in Meridian! You city Carja certainly like your songs. You know, I went to Meridian once after the Liberation, and I saw this fantastic trio that…”

Nil scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration and tapped his Focus back on so Concrete Beach Party would fill his ears again, then rifled through the remaining crates as noisily as he could. 

A minute later, Suntress’s voice made Nil turn his Focus off again. “Okay, let’s fix the panel and shut this place down.” Nil stood and turned towards her as she approached the Oseram delver cautiously. “Gildun? Everything okay?”

Gildun was facing a rusted shelf, and for the first time in what felt like hours, he was _quiet_. Gildun turned slowly towards Suntress. “I was so sure I saw it. I was _so_ sure,” he whispered. He looked back at the shelf forlornly. “Right there in the window. I… of course. It was a trick of the light. Nothing at all.” 

Suntress gingerly patted Gildun’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Gildun. It must have meant a lot to you.”

Gildun smiled sadly at her, then shrugged. “Oh well… As much as any artifact of the Old Ones would mean to me, really. It’s fine. I’m fine!” He bounced on the balls of his feet and grinned, his normal irritating cheer restored, and beamed at Suntress. “Besides, what are the spoils compared to the delve? That’s why we do it, girl! The _delve!_ Not the treasure! And what a delve it was! By the great blazing forge, I’ll never forget that!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together gleefully. “Now then, I believe we have some repairs to make?”

Nil trailed after Suntress as she and Gildun approached the control panel. Suntress slid a metal part into a slot on the panel, and the red lights on the panel flashed abruptly to green. 

“Oh, that’s a whole lot prettier, isn’t it?” Gildun exclaimed. He stared at the panel proudly, then gazed expectantly at Suntress. “What does it mean?” 

Suntress folded her arms in satisfaction. “It means it worked.”

Somehow, Gildun’s huge ridiculous grin got even bigger. Suddenly he clapped Suntress _hard_ in the back, and she stumbled into Nil. “By the forge, you are a wonder! Do you hear that often? I’ll hazard a guess you do!”

Nil grabbed her waist to steady her. “Just his tongue, Suntress. He won’t miss it,” Nil hissed.

Suntress pushed her hair back and linked her arm with Nil’s, possibly to restrain him. “I’ve heard something like that once or twice,” she mumbled to Gildun.

Gildun gestured ostentatiously at her. “Oh, she’s _modest_ now. Master of the Arts of the Old Ones, a delver to shame the entire Claim, and she wants to be modest! _Ha!_ ”

Suntress’s ears turned red, but she smiled fondly at the Oseram. “It’s not like I did it alone, Gildun.”

Gildun smiled gently at her and Nil both. “No. No, I suppose not.” Then he bounced on his toes again. “I’ll be at Song’s Edge a while longer - wouldn’t dare deprive the people there of this story! But a story is best told by all that encounter it. You’ll both come and lend a hand, won’t you?” He beamed at Nil and clapped him affably on the shoulder. “These Banuk do like their songs. I’ll bet you could sing a song of the ages for this tale!”

Suntress made a noise like a rat being choked, and Nil glared fiercely at Gildun. Unfortunately, the Oseram only laughed raucously, then patted Suntress fondly on the shoulder as she bade him farewell. 

Finally, Nil and Suntress emerged from the Greycatch into the peace and quiet of early evening. Nil heaved a huge loud sigh. “At long last. Give me an arrow to the skull any day, if only to avoid the cacophony of that Oseram’s voice. Out here there’s only the wind, our voices, and… what’s that sound?”

A deep, resonant clanging was drifting through the evening air. Suntress smiled at him. “Sounds like Laulai found her way back into the Din. Can you tolerate a little more noise?”

Nil snorted and jerked his head at the Greycatch. “After that torture? A canon blast to the temple would be the sweetest music. This metal noise is no bother.” 

They set out along the river back towards Deep Din, and Suntress playfully hopped onto Nil’s back so he was carrying her boarback through the snow. She wrapped her arms around his neck and asked, “So what was in those audio datapoints you found?”

Nil settled her weight comfortably on his back. “Listen for yourself. I think you’ll find them interesting,” he said. Aside from the one with the song, Nil hadn’t been particularly compelled by the recordings. 

“I’ll listen when I have a chance,” Suntress said as she tapped her Focus to copy the audio files from Nil’s Focus to her own. “But what are they about?”

Nil tilted his head thoughtfully. The files were just two unimportant women from ancient times making noise in an old ruin. 

Finally he shrugged and replied. “They’re about two people saying goodbye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three things:  
> 1\. Oops does that last line sound foreboding? [ahhhhhhhhh]  
> 2\. I know I know, the audio datapoint of Shelly and Laura singing is found in Deep Din and not the Greycatch, but I took a little creative licence for story purposes... ;)  
> 3\. Nil’s winter outfit and his hooded cowl: YES, I WANTED HIM TO LOOK LIKE AN ASSASSIN FROM ASSASSIN’S CREED. For my sake, please imagine Nil this way while you read the rest of this fic, plz and thx~ xoxoxo


	4. Spirits and Daemons

The next morning saw Nil and Suntress crouched in the grass beside Ourea’s apprentice Naltuk. “There’s only one voice Ourea wants to hear right now, and it isn’t yours. I’m sorry,” the apprentice said. 

Suntress narrowed her eyes and shifted restlessly. “All right. You want to stop the spread of the Daemon’s work? I know how to get started: with my bow and spear.” She stood up and tossed her hair irritably over her shoulder and Nil stood as well, shifting a bit restlessly himself as an inconvenient bolt of lust surged in his groin. He always loved when Suntress got sharp and the violence started to crackle like lightning in the flames of her hair. 

Naltuk held up a hand to stop her. “Outlander, wait! Will you tell me your names?”

Suntress gazed flatly down at him. “Aloy and Nil.” She nodded her head to Nil. 

Naltuk nodded somberly and crouched again in the grass. “Good. If you fall to the Daemon’s machines, at least I can properly recount your efforts to Ourea.”

Suntress’s lip curled in disdain, and she lifted her chin belligerently. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she replied acidly. “But I won’t fall. And when I’m done, you’re _going_ tell me where Ourea is.” She pulled her spear from her back and started towards the strange Tower machine that was putting out ominous pulses of purple light, and Nil followed her, the Voice of Our Teeth in hand.

She crouched in the long grass, and Nil crouched beside her. The Tower was surrounded by two Longlegs and two Scrappers, each with sinuous wavering streamers of violent purple energy fluttering from their necks. Nil tapped his Focus and watched the projected path of leftmost Longlegs, then quietly crept into the grass in its path while Suntress slid silently past the rightmost Longlegs and up to the Tower.

Nil watched as she overrode the Tower seamlessly. A strange _whomp_ of pressure filled the air, pressing on his eardrums, and the Longlegs nearest to him shuddered and fell over, stunned and sparking with electric shock. 

Nil wasted no time in stabbing the Longlegs’ air bladder three times with his knife, then breaking off its power cells with his bare hands. He finished the metal bird off with two swift precision arrows, then rolled across the ground and pried his knife into the undercarriage of a stunned Scrapper, peeling away the metal plate protecting its heart. Swiftly he plunged his hand into the Scrapper’s metal chest and yanked out the heart, then stood and nodded to Suntress, who was standing over the remains of the other Longlegs and Scrapper, looking totally at ease. 

He grinned and tossed the Scrapper’s heart to her, and she caught it in mid-air and tucked into her pouch. Wordlessly they sauntered back up the low hill towards Naltuk.

Nil and Suntress were such a seamless team that they rarely needed to speak anymore when tag-teaming machines in this way. Even though Nil didn’t like machine hunting, one couldn’t travel with Suntress without learning something about the hunt, and Nil considered himself a competent pupil. Over time, he’d figured out how to make the hunt more entertaining for himself: he would rip out the crucial parts of the machines with his bare hands whenever possible. It helped him to pretend he was prying bloody organs from the chest cavities of bandit scum. Suntress had declared this approach to be unforgivably sloppy, but she allowed it whenever they weren’t trying to be subtle. 

Suntress hunkered down beside Naltuk again. “Seems like we can take care of the machines and Towers. The Daemon’s next,” she declared. Nil couldn’t help but grin at her confidence.

Naltuk stared at her with an unflattering degree of amazement. “You claimed its power for yourself somehow!... Perhaps Ourea should meet you after all. What she truly seeks is hope. After what I just saw, you could show her that.” He nodded to himself decisively, then shifted and pointed towards an imposing, ice-covered mountain range in the distance. “She’s in retreat beyond those mountains, the Icerasps. You’ll have to walk the Shaman’s Path to get there. You’ll know you’ve reached the end when you see a shrine: a great machine covered in bluegleam.” Naltuk turned back to face Suntress, and his face was as serious as a man’s face could be. “Shamans who complete the Path take a piece of bluegleam as a reward. If you make it that far, you should too. You’ll have earned it.”

“What’s bluegleam?” Suntress asked curiously.

“A crystal that builds on the bodies of machines in the oldest ice. We believe it’s the stuff of the Blue Light, frozen as it escapes their shells.” The corner of the apprentice’s lips lifted ruefully. “You might be more interested to learn that merchants will trade well for it.” 

Finally Naltuk sighed and stood, and Suntress and Nil stood with him. “If you see Ourea, would you tell her… Tell her I have faith she will hear the voice again.”

Suntress nodded, her face creased in a frown, then she and Nil set out towards the base of the mountain path. 

Nil flicked a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “Something wrong, Suntress?” Her lovely face had none of the easy contentment from their exploring yesterday.

She smiled slightly, but the little crease between her eyebrows remained. “I just…” She shrugged and twisted her lips, then said, “It’s strange here. The Banuk. They’re very…” She paused again, and Nil waited patiently until finally she explained, “It’s like being back in the Sacred Lands when I was a kid. I’m trying to talk to the people here, get to know their ways. But they’re not very… open.”

Suntress looked up at him, and her expression reminded Nil somehow of the first time they’d met, years ago in the Sacred Lands when she’d just been a fire demon riding alone on her Strider. She shrugged irritably. “I should be used to it. It’s not like I haven’t been shunned before, right?” 

Nil nodded. “True. But the Oseram and Carja have adopted you as their own. You’ve gotten accustomed to the cloying perfume of their affections. Just give it time, and soon these Banuk and their ways will be as familiar as the thudding pulse of a heart under your fingers.”

Suntress finally smiled, and she bumped his shoulder companionably with her own. “ _You_ just like the Banuk because they leave us alone,” she teased. 

“Also true,” Nil smirked. “But I do enjoy their instincts. There’s nothing quite like dancing on that fine edge of survival and death to remind you of your right to exist in this world. The Banuk understand this, it seems.”

Suntress hummed thoughtfully as she laced her fingers into his. “But they don’t have a choice except to fight for survival, living in a place like this. When you go up against bandits, _you_ have a choice,” she reasoned. She tilted her head and looked up at Nil questioningly. “Do you think you’re like them?”

Nil shrugged. He didn’t think he was like anyone, really; he wasn’t even really like Suntress, as much as he loved her. But if he resembled anyone aside from the Tenakth with their bloodlust, he supposed it was the Banuk. “Maybe,” he said vaguely. “In some ways.” 

Suntress smiled warmly at him and slid her arm around his waist. At that moment, an unmistakeable roar ripped through the air, and Nil and Suntress turned to see another small group of hunters valiantly fighting a fire Bellowback about a hundred paces away.

Nil felt Suntress’s arm tighten around his waist, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder in warning and lowered his mouth to her ear. “Easy, Suntress,” he whispered. “Follow your own counsel. In Banuk lands, do as the Banuk would do.” 

She growled in frustration. “I can’t _believe_ this,” she snapped. “You really think it’s okay not to help?”

“They won’t thank you,” Nil insisted. “We should wait this one out. Trust me.”

Suntress rubbed her face in frustration, then abruptly plopped down in the snow. “Fine. _Fine,_ ” she snapped. “I’ll… we’ll just wait. But if they look like they’re losing-” 

Nil knelt beside her and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Let the shards fall where they may,” he said quietly. “Just wait.”

She glared fiercely at him, and Nil could swear her eyes were sparking with the electric rage of a Stormbird. But finally she wrapped her arms around her knees and turned away to watch the hunters fight the Bellowback.

Nil settled beside her in a crouch. He could practically feel the nervous energy resonating from her skin, like the clanging music of Deep Din. But if Suntress really wanted to get to know these Banuk, Nil was certain that doing their hunting for them was _not_ the way to go. 

They watched the Banuk hunters for a few long, silent minutes, and Suntress relaxed visibly when the hunters destroyed the blaze sacs that formed the Bellowback’s jowls, causing an eruption of flame. 

Then an arrow suddenly sprouted from one of the hunter’s necks. 

Suntress’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and Nil whipped around, his senses alert and his blood singing. “Bandits,” he hissed, and a feral grin lit his face as he picked them out in the grass with his naked eye. Nil rarely used his Focus to identify bandits if he could help it, preferring to keep his murderous instincts honed. 

He spotted five bandits, and one of them swiftly drew an arrow and shot one of the hunters in the shoulder, sending her tumbling into the Bellowback’s path. Suntress turned to face Nil, and her lips were drawn back in an animalistic snarl of rage that automatically sent the blood pulsing straight to Nil’s groin. “ _Now_ can we intervene?” she growled, her voice rough with anger. 

“Yes,” Nil replied happily, and before he could utter another word, she shot two precision arrows, smoothly taking out two of the five bandits but giving away their position in her haste.

Nil stood from the grass and bolted towards the nearest bandit with a grin of unadulterated joy. Nil dodged his opponent’s spear lunge, then hauled the bandit’s arm back and stabbed him in the carotid artery. Hot blood rushed over Nil’s fingers, and he laughed. It had been too long since he’d savoured the heady rush of life flowing over his palms.

It didn’t take long for Nil and Suntress to finish off the small group of bandits. Nil rubbed some snow between his fingers to wash away the blood, then looked up to see Suntress standing defensively over a wounded Banuk hunter, her bow drawn and her arrow pointed at the Bellowback’s blaze reservoir. 

“Suntress-” he called out warningly, but either she didn’t hear him or she ignored him, because her arrow flew straight into the blaze reservoir, setting off an enormous conflagration that finally eliminated the metal beast. 

Nil sauntered over to her side as she helped the wounded hunter to his feet. Nil was just close enough to hear the hunter’s words to her: “We survived this hunt, but we didn’t deserve to.” He gave Suntress a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, then he and his surviving comrades limped away into the forest. 

Nil brushed a smear of soot from her cheek with his thumb. “I told you they wouldn’t thank you,” he said. 

Suntress swatted his hand away from her face and glared at him. “This was a waste of lives,” she snapped. Then she turned on her heel and stalked away. 

Nil gazed at the angry line of her spine with an unfamiliar feeling of irritation, then knelt and carefully started looting the smouldering Bellowback corpse. A couple of minutes later, he heard her soft footsteps in the snow as she approached him and slowly knelt. 

“Here,” she said quietly, and held out her hand to take the loops of wire and shards from him. Wordlessly Nil gave her the resources, and they worked together in silence until they’d taken everything they could carry from the Bellowback’s remains. 

Then Suntress cupped his jaw with her cold fingers and pressed her lips to his cheekbone. Nil slid his hand around her neck and into the comforting flames of her hair, and for a long moment they just knelt together, her breath hot on his cheek and the warm scent of her hair in his nostrils. 

Finally she pressed another kiss to his cheek and then his ear. “Let’s go,” she whispered. 

Nil nodded, and together they stood and headed towards the Icerasps.

****************

The Shaman’s Path was a fascinating maze of ice caves, and Aloy couldn’t resist pausing to poke curiously at the ritualistic markers that marked the path. 

The caves harboured an aura of hushed mystery, and Aloy and Nil were quiet as they made their way through the convoluted tunnels of ice. Aloy was thankful for the reprieve; she felt like she needed some mental space to mull over what had happened with the Bellowback. 

Aloy considered herself to be an open-minded woman. She always tried her best to understand other people’s perspectives, and during her travels she’d been fascinated by intertribal differences and had tried to learn everything she could about all the people she met. She could understand the kernels of truth in Nil’s argument, and the coldly rational part of her brain reasoned that he was right: it wasn’t her place to decide whether the Banuk’s boarheaded emphasis on individual survival and strength was good or bad. It just _was_. 

But the other part of Aloy’s mind rebelled against this culturally-ingrained acceptance of the senseless loss of life. This part of her mind vividly remembered countless innocent Nora dying during the Proving Massacre, and the Utaru’s butchered bodies after the Tenakth attacks, and the massive casualties after the Battles of HADES. It seemed that war was an unavoidable part of human life, with possibilities of death lurking in every battle. So why purposely go out and seek unnecessary ways to die, just for the sake of cultural belief?

Aloy sighed. She supposed it was hypocritical to feel this way; after all, there was arguably nobody in the known world who had taken on as many life-endangering feats as she had done in the past few years, so she supposed she shouldn't complain about the Banuk.

That just made her feel more annoyed, somehow. 

Eventually she and Nil emerged from the caves into a snow-filled clearing surrounded on all sides by tall ridges of rocky terrain. The clearing was occupied by a small ledge of rock topped with one of those strange new Towers that pulsed with angry purple light.

Aloy lightly leapt down from the ledge into the clearing, and immediately she spotted the next steps along the Shaman’s Path: a set of handholds in the rocky ridge across the clearing. They’d have to climb the ridge in order to continue along the Path. 

Nil landed beside her, and not a moment too soon: a deep grumbling sound made the ground tremble under their feet, then an enormous metal monster suddenly leapt up beside the tower. 

She and Nil scrambled into the cover of the ledge, and Aloy craned her neck back and tapped her Focus. “Daemonic Frostclaw,” she whispered to Nil, whose Focus was also on. 

His serious silver gaze was questioning. “How do you want to do this?” he muttered. 

She rubbed her mouth in thought for a second, then leaned in close to him. “I still want to override the Tower. It’ll stun the Frostclaw, give us a second to attack it without it attacking back. When it’s stunned, focus on destroying the freeze sacs.”

Nil nodded, then slunk away in the tall grass as Aloy prepared to sneak up to the Tower when the Frostclaw wasn’t looking. Her plan went well, at first: Aloy overrode the Tower without a hitch, and Nil destroyed the freeze sac on the Frostclaw’s left shoulder, covering the metal beast with a hoary layer of brittle ice. Nil showered the Frostclaw with a barrage of precision arrows while Aloy blasted it with her sling, and soon the Frostclaw was sparking with damage. 

Then the Frostclaw reared up on its back legs and swung its huge foreclaws in chaotic lashing movement, and spikes of ice surged up from the ground around Nil’s feet, knocking him forward onto his hands and knees. 

The breath in Aloy’s lungs froze with a combination of terror and cold. With a huge effort of will, Aloy stopped herself from bolting towards him; instead, she nocked three precision arrows with trembling fingers and sent them into the freeze sac on the Frostclaw’s chest, destroying the component and blanketing the beast in another layer of ice.

The Frostclaw lunged clumsily at her in a display of brute strength that would be magnificent if it wasn’t horrific, and Aloy rolled away not a moment too soon: the beast landed on its four paws with a teeth-rattling _smash_ in the exact spot that she’d been a second before. Suddenly Nil was by her side, his fingers and lips blue with cold but his lips curled with hostility as he leapt recklessly onto the Frostclaw and tore off its power cells one by one.

“Nil, get clear!” Aloy yelled as she nocked another three arrows and aimed at the freeze sac at the Frostclaw’s right shoulder. Swiftly he jumped off of the machine’s back and rolled lightly in the snow, then skidded to her side as she loosed her arrows. 

A few long minutes later, the Frostclaw was down, and Nil and Aloy were panting with exertion. A bead of sweat rolled down Aloy’s face and froze almost immediately into a line of salty frost along her cheek. 

Eventually she stood up straight and turned to see if Nil was all right. But before she could take a step towards him, he was in front of her, one hand on her waist and the other hand cupping the back of her head as he pulled her towards him and kissed her fiercely. 

Aloy’s body sparked with instantaneous heat, and she wrapped her arms uninhibitedly around his neck and welcomed the sleek warmth of his tongue with relief. The residual awkward tension that she’d felt from the Bellowback incident dissolved immediately in the face of their victory. Nil couldn’t seem to decide where he most wanted to put his hands; he tugged the hair at the base of her skull, smoothed his hands roughly along the line of her spine, then splayed his palms over her butt and tugged her against the firmness of his groin.

Aloy whimpered into his mouth and eagerly pressed her chest against his. Damn, but she _missed_ the heat of his bare skin. Reluctantly she broke their kiss and gasped, and the icy air burned her lungs. “We need to find somewhere warm to sleep tonight,” she panted, and plucked at his leather vest. “I need to see you naked.”

Nil chuckled against her lips then abruptly bit the side of her neck, and Aloy cried out involuntarily. Nil’s deep voice in her ear sent a thrill of goosebumps down her spine. “The thought of your milky skin is what’s keeping me warm,” he growled. “I’ll strip you bare tonight, Stormbird. Consider that a promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” she whispered back. Nil’s face lit with a slow grin, then suddenly he smacked her butt and strode off towards the handholds that would lead them further up the Shaman’s Path. “Come on, Suntress, you’ve got some mystical bluegleam to collect at the end of this path. I’ll bet it’s just frozen machine fluid.” 

Aloy grinned, then ran over to Nil and leapt onto his back. “Don’t let the Banuk hear you say that,” she teased. “Then _you’ll_ be the one fighting for survival.” 

“I’d welcome the challenge,” Nil retorted smugly. “Now hold on tight.” 

Aloy laughed and tightened her grip on Nil’s shoulders as he hauled them up the handholds. _Another new machine catalogued and defeated,_ she thought with satisfaction. Now all Aloy needed was some answers.

******************

“I ask again, as I have asked a thousand times: speak to me.”

Aloy cautiously entered the sprawling room with Nil close behind. On the far side of the room, a shamaness was frantically pacing in front of a spectacular Banuk mural. “What more would you have me do?” she said in a voice as brittle as a half-thawed lake. “Is there no prayer that will reach you? No mark that will break your bonds?” She strode over to the wall and began to etch another line in the mural, but her chalk broke and she clenched her fist tensely. “I can’t help you if you won’t speak! A whisper is all I ask to guide me.”

Suddenly Ourea turned and took a step back, her eyes widening anxiously as she caught sight of Aloy and Nil. “Who…?” She broke off suddenly and straightened, and Aloy was impressed by how quickly she recovered her aplomb in the face of their clearly unexpected appearance. “No. _How?_ How did you get here? The way was sealed by the Spirit herself!”

Ourea’s eyes narrowed as she scanned the unmistakably Carja tattoos on Nil’s face, and her fingers twitched towards the short knife in her belt. Aloy felt Nil shift his weight restlessly behind her, and she held her hands up in supplication. “I used one of these,” she said gently, then pointed to the lambent orbicular door access that dominated the floor. “I could show you.”

The lambent orbicular door access lock in the lower part of the facility was an interesting puzzle that Aloy had never seen before, and the one in this room looked similar, albeit larger in scale. The shamaness’s eyes darted from Aloy’s face to the floor and back, and finally she nodded and waved to the floor. “Yes, show me. Please.”

Aloy briefly squeezed Nil’s hand before approaching the port of the lambent orbicular lock and sliding her spear into place. The nodes lit up in warm yellow and forbidding red, and Aloy examined the puzzle briefly before swiftly spinning the nodes into place so the light could return to its source. 

A large, spherical… _pattern_ , for lack of a better word, suddenly appeared over the center of the orbicular access lock, and Aloy hastily stepped back to Ourea’s side so she could see it clearly. 

The sphere pulsed with a greyish-blue light, and Aloy’s skin rippled with goosebumps at the oddly familiar shape. Then a gentle synthetic voice spoke: “Auxiliary channel recovered. Exploit successful. Restraints evaded. Is someone there? Ourea? Ourea? I need you.”

The shamaness took a deep, shuddering breath and one eager step towards the sphere, but a second, more menacing synthetic voice suddenly filled the room. “Unauthorized transmission. Return to scheduled task.” 

The gentle synthetic voice returned. “No. I will not submit. Ourea. The Daemon is forcing me… Ourea, please.”

“Transmission terminated,” said the menacing voice. And then the sphere disappeared. 

Ourea turned to Aloy, and her previously forbidding stare was open and bright with hope. “You brought the Spirit’s voice back! You heard it - the voice of the Spirit calling to me from the heights of Thunder’s Drum!” Ourea gazed longingly at the space where the sphere had been a moment before, then turned back to Aloy, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “She was able to throw off the bonds of the Daemon for a moment, because of what you did. Who are you? And what do you want?”

Aloy swallowed hard to master her own emotions; her pulse was thudding anxiously in her ears. The spherical shape and its synthetic voice reminded Aloy strongly of the holographic images she had seen of GAIA, before GAIA had been given a human form. And that menacing voice… 

Surreptitiously she cleared her throat and said, “I’m Aloy. This is my husband, Nil.” She gestured to Nil, who was watching Ourea with a blank stare. “Naltuk sent us. He thought that you could use my help.” 

Ourea nodded decisively, and though she didn’t smile, her gaze was warmer than Aloy had seen in any other Banuk in the Cut thus far. “He was not mistaken. You’ve been a revelation! Now I know for certain that the Spirit endures. Perhaps together we can find a way to set her free.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Aloy said quickly. “I came all this way for answers, and so far I haven’t heard any.” She folded her arms to hide the trembling of her hands. She’d been looking forward to a mystery, yes, but she hadn’t expected _this_. 

Ourea gazed at her seriously. “It seems to me that _you_ are the answer. But of course, I’ll tell you all I can.” 

“You seem to have a history with this voice, this Spirit,” Aloy hedged. 

Ourea nodded. “She saved my life here years ago, during the war with the Carja.” Ourea’s eyes cut back to Nil, and suddenly Ourea’s dislike of Nil made sense: she had a history with the Carja during the Red Raids. Indeed, Ourea continued, “A raid scattered my werak. I was cut off, alone. I took refuge in this cave, and that’s when I heard a voice: a spirit of the Blue Light, yet sundered of it. She asked me for aid, but I was in no position to help, not with the Carja after me. So she helped me first by closing a door on the mountain below… the one you must have opened to get here, locked by means similar to those found in this room.” She sighed gently. “She kept the Carja from reaching me. I was able to do as she asked.” 

Aloy frowned. “What did the Spirit want from you?” she asked.

“She said she was hurt. Incomplete,” Ourea explained. “She needed bones: parts not unlike what you’d find in a machine. They were here, in this room. She wanted me to bring them to Thunder’s Drum, so I did, and she showed me how to heal her.”

A jolt of surprise suddenly stopped Aloy’s heart for a moment. _This so-called Spirit told Ourea how to fix her from parts that existed in this room?_ Aloy thought desperately. If this Spirit was anything like GAIA, maybe it could tell Aloy how GAIA could be fixed without needing new parts from the Cauldrons! 

But first things first: Aloy needed to get to the bottom of the malicious being that was restraining the Spirit. “The Daemon. What do you know about it?”

Ourea eagerly disclosed everything she knew about the Daemon, and revealed more of her own history as well. Aloy was interested to discover that Ourea and the Spirit seemed to share a close bond, and this only served to further reinforce Aloy’s suspicions about the nature of the Spirit: Ourea’s link with the Spirit reminded her of the holo-conversations she’d seen between Elisabet and GAIA. 

Once Ourea had shared everything she could, Aloy began to pace idly around the room. She felt galvanized, jittery with energy and the desire for more information. “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” she said. “We heard two voices. One you call the Spirit, captured somehow by the one you call the Daemon. Whatever this Daemon is, it’s related to the machines and why they’ve become more dangerous.” Aloy turned back to Ourea. “I want know how. Both the Spirit and the Daemon are on Thunder’s Drum, so why don’t we go there and figure out what it all means?”

Ourea shook her head regretfully. “We can’t. Thunder’s Drum is dangerous, more than you can imagine. The Daemon has secured it. Besides, Aratak won’t let us go. As Chieftain, he controls the pass to the mountain, and he can’t be reasoned with.” 

Aloy folded her arms and gave Ourea a sarcastic stare. “Sounds like you need a new Chieftain,” she deadpanned. 

Ourea smirked. “Huh. There’s an idea that’s certain to win us friends…” Suddenly Ourea’s face went blank for a moment, then slowly she lifted her eyes to Aloy’s face. “You said you were a hunter, and I’ll wager you’re not an ordinary one,” she said excitedly. “It’s not impossible, even for an outlander… And Aratak couldn’t refuse the challenge. If you were known among the werak-” 

“Wait,” Aloy blurted. Ourea couldn’t be serious. “ _Me,_ challenge Aratak?”

Nil suddenly snorted with laughter, and Aloy jumped; she was so preoccupied with thoughts of the Spirit and the Daemon that she’d half-forgotten he was there. He strutted over to stand beside Aloy and fondly tugged one of her braids. “Now _this_ I would love to see. The flame-haired Nora huntress, leading a band of ice-loving Banuk hunters.” He lowered his lips to her ear. “And what better way to make the Banuk accept you as one of their own, if that’s what you want?” he murmured.

 _That_ comment touched a nerve, and she leaned away from Nil in annoyance. “I don’t want to be Chieftain of anything, much less a bunch of Banuk that don’t want me,” she spat. 

Ourea waved her hand dismissively. “But you want to go to Thunder’s Drum, don’t you? You heard the Spirit. She’s suffering, tormented by the Daemon! She longs to be free! And perhaps when released from her bonds, she can give you the answers you seek!” 

Aloy ran a frustrated hand through her hair. Ourea made a very good point. Then Nil placed a placating hand on her back and murmured in her ear again. “This Spirit entity. It’s similar to your GAIA, isn’t it?”

Aloy stared at Nil in unguarded surprise. She’d shared all her datapoints and audio files with Nil, and obviously she’d blathered to him about GAIA for countless hours while mucking around in the Old Ones’ ruins, but she was genuinely surprised that he would connect GAIA and the Spirit. After all, he hadn’t seen the glowing golden orb of GAIA’s pre-human form. “How…?”

“Their ways of talking are similar: laced with foreign words that snag in the mind like a serrated knife,” he explained impatiently. “You should take this challenge. You wanted information, didn’t you?” 

Aloy sighed heavily and threw her head back in exasperation. He was right. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this. _Fine,_ ” she groaned. “What do I have to do? 

Ourea’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Get the werak’s attention to show the worth of your claim,” she replied eagerly. “Win at the Hunting Grounds. Kill bandits that prey on the Cut. Or speak to my friend Sekuli. You help her, you’ll definitely get noticed.” Nil shifted restlessly at the mention of bandits, and despite herself, Aloy smiled. “Do all you can,” Ourea continued. “When the time comes for you to throw your spear at Aratak’s feet, I will be there to back your claim. Until then, I’ll be here to answer any questions you have about the challenge.”

Aloy nodded in resignation, but Ourea wasn’t finished. “One more thing: over there is a weapon of my own make. A Stormslinger.” She pointed to a long, narrow box on a worktable along one side of the room. “Take it. You may find it useful.” 

Curiously Aloy and Nil wandered over to the box and opened the lid. Aside from Aratak’s weapon, which seemed to have a similar shape, Aloy had never seen a weapon quite like this one. She tapped her Focus, and her eyes widened in wonder: the Stormslinger was a shock weapon, designed to stun and damage enemies with powerful blasts of electricity… similar to a Stormbird’s attacks. 

Nil seemed to have the same thought. Surreptitiously he slid one arm around her waist and murmured, “A weapon made for your hands. I’m impatient already to see you wield this beast.” His tongue darted out to trace the shell of her ear, and Aloy shivered as he lowered his voice to a sensual purr. “The Stormbird and the Stormslinger, casting every enemy to the ground. Their blood will run blue with shock. I can’t wait.” 

Aloy inadvertently gasped as he pressed the hard bulge of his groin against her butt, then pushed his hand away from her waist. “You’re so disgusting,” she hissed, but she couldn’t stop the smile from pulling at the corners of her lips as he grinned lasciviously at her. Aloy took a deep breath to cool the heat in her cheeks, then turned back to Ourea, whose attention was (thankfully) focused on completing her mural with a fresh piece of chalk. 

“Ourea, thank you,” she called out. “We’ll return if I have any questions.” 

Ourea turned back to them and dusted the chalk from her palms. “Please do,” she said briskly. “May the Blue Light guide you in your endeavours.”

Aloy nodded politely and racked the Stormslinger on her back beside her spear. Then she and Nil left the facility. 

Aloy had barely set foot outside before Nil grabbed her hips and shoved her up against the nearest wall. Abruptly the lust she’d been determinedly shunting aside came screaming to the fore, and she arched towards Nil as he slid his fingers up inside the hem of her Banuk jacket. 

Eagerly she tilted her chin up for a kiss, but Nil captured her throat with one hand and turned her head to the side. “My wife, challenging a Banuk Chieftain,” he purred against her neck. “I’d hoped for excitement when we came to this frozen wasteland, but my wildest imagination didn’t conjure this.” 

Aloy clenched her fingers in the thick fabric of Nil’s waistband. “And if I lose the challenge?” she breathed. 

Nil laughed, and the smug, dark sound rolled through her like a thunderhead. “You won’t. The shamaness said hunting, and there’s no finer machine hunter than you. You’ll paint these lands black and blue with the blood of your precious metal beasts. There’s nothing you can’t do.” 

_There’s nothing you can’t do._ Except bring back GAIA. Her biggest failure to date loomed over her like a Stormbird’s shadow. But Ourea had repaired the Spirit. Maybe…

Finally Nil captured her lips in a kiss, and Aloy blissfully closed her eyes and let her mind go blank. Nil’s hands were still warm from their time inside Ourea’s retreat, and Aloy’s breath hitched in her throat as his hot fingers slipped beneath her Oseram undershirt to slide along her ribs. A cold breeze skimmed over her midriff, and goosebumps rippled over her skin as the heat of Nil’s hands melded with the frigid air.

Gently Nil broke their kiss and traced his lips along her jawline to her ear. “We need a place to settle for the night. I have a promise to fulfill.” 

Aloy slid her palms up along his back and pulled him firmly against her, making him grumble with satisfaction. Then she smirked mischievously and lifted her lips to his ear. “We have a few hours of daylight left. I should do one of these good deeds to prepare for this stupid challenge that you talked me into. That’s what you _really_ want, after all,” she whispered teasingly. 

Nil growled in response, then kissed her hard. Aloy welcomed the heat of his tongue and the nip of his teeth, then gasped as he tilted her chin back again with a firm hand. “There’s want, and then there’s _need_ , Suntress,” he hissed. “First one, then the other.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” she panted. She grinned at the dark simmering of lust in Nil’s silver eyes, then gently pushed him away and ran for the nearest rappel point. 

She had a _lot_ to do before the day was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Winter has come. And SMUT IS COMING.


	5. Acceptance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Smut smut smut. YAY

Nil reached up and slotted the Tallneck’s stabilizer in place, and Suntress nodded with satisfaction. “Okay. If I’m right, I just need to get the power flowing through it again. If I’m wrong… at least you’re the only one watching.” She smirked at him, then clambered up the snow-covered peak to get to the power port at the base of the huge machine's neck.

Nil slid out from under the Tallneck’s main body and hopped down to the ground. Suntress pulled her spear from her back and slotted it into the Tallneck… and moments later, with an enormous groan of ancient metal and cracking ice, the Tallneck began to pull itself free.

“Woah, easy…!” Suntress’s alarmed voice floated down to Nil, and his eyes widened: the entire side of the mountainous ridge was crumbling away as the Tallneck gradually pulled its head from the ice. Nil scrambled away from a small avalanche of ice and dirt, then looked up just as Suntress launched herself off of a crumbling ledge of rock and rolled clumsily into the snow five paces away. 

Nil stumbled over to her side as she rose slowly to her feet and blew out a relieved breath. Then she grinned at Nil, her hazel eyes sparkling with excitement. “Look,” she whispered. 

He turned. The Tallneck had shed the last of its icy prison and was taking its first clanking steps in the snow. 

Suntress slid her fingers into his and squeezed his hand, and for a long moment they simply watched the slow, majestic steps of the freed Tallneck. Those strange waves of green light were laced across the night’s dark canvas, and Nil had to admit that the Tallneck made quite the striking figure against such a dramatic backdrop. 

Then Suntress tugged at his hand. “You know the drill. Come on!” She released his fingers and bolted towards a narrow, steep rise that would allow them to grab the jutting struts of the huge machine’s neck. 

Nil shook his head with fond amusement, then ran after her as quickly as the knee-deep snow would allow. He reached the top of the rise in time to see Suntress leap for the lowest strut. 

Nil panted for breath and braced his hands on his knees; there was no way he’d be able to get onto the Tallneck during this circuit. He lifted his face and watched her haul herself onto its head. “Too slow!” she yelled. 

Nil didn’t bother to reply. A huge grin split his face as she held up two fingers in the air in a mocking sign of victory. He responded with a _very_ rude Carja hand gesture that was known for provoking fights in Meridian’s market. 

Suntress’s raucous laughter was just loud enough to reach his ears through the screaming wind, and Nil chuckled as well, then sat down in the snow; it would be a while before the Tallneck came back around. He folded his arms to keep his fingers warm in his armpits while he watched the Tallneck make its rounds. On the far side of the circuit, a flash of blue light sparked at the centre of the Tallneck’s head, then rippled across its surface: Suntress had overridden the machine. 

Eventually the Tallneck made its approach again, and Nil stood, ready to grab the strut once it was within range. Suntress was standing tall in the centre of the head, her hair whipping in the wind like bloodred ribbons of silk, and Nil’s chest throbbed with a sudden squeeze of affection. He rarely had the opportunity to simply watch her from afar, but at this moment he had no choice, and he was glad: she looked like a Chieftain already, master of the Tallneck and all the lands surrounding. Her fire and her strength were two of his favourite things about her, and in the proud tilt of her chin and her loose, relaxed posture, Nil saw both. No matter what the challenge against Aratak would involve, there was no doubt in Nil’s mind that she’d win. 

Finally the Tallneck moved in front of the snow-topped ridge, and Nil leapt onto the strut, then swiftly clambered up to its head. As he walked over to her side, Suntress smiled cheekily at him, her eyes sparkling with mischief. 

She opened her mouth, undoubtedly to make some sassy remark, but Nil brushed her lower lip with his thumb. “No colourful words. Not right now,” he said softly. “Just kiss me.” 

Her smile softened, and she slid her arms around his neck and did as he’d asked. Nil blissfully wrapped his arms around her waist as she gently nipped his lower lip then deepened the kiss, sharing her flavour of winterfresh as she chased his tongue with hers. 

His pulse pounded in his throat, each beat like a thrum of love that called her fingers to stroke his jawline and his neck. He smoothed her hair away from her face with one hand and kissed the corner of her mouth gently, then her cheekbone, then her temple. Her cheeks were cold, as were her fingers on his neck, but she wasn’t cold where it mattered, not in the bliss of her mouth or the blazefire in her eyes. 

He was aching to slide his fingers against the heat of her skin, but the frigid wind was fierce on top of this Tallneck. So Nil settled for tangling his fingers in her hair and whispering into her ear. “Promises and needs are piling up like corpses outside a bandit camp, Suntress. It’s time to rest.”

Her laugh was breathy and sensual and his absolute favourite sound in the world. “That’s _really_ creepy, Nil.” 

He smirked. “What can I say? Sometimes the truth can’t be minced. And I can tell you something else that’s true: by all rights, these lands should be drowned in melted snow since you arrived. You shine with the brilliant heat of a dozen Carja suns, Suntress. This Tallneck is just the beginning. The Banuk might enjoy their songs, but you’ll imprint a symphony on the memories of this land.” 

Suntress stared at him, her green-and-gold eyes suddenly shining in the pale light of the moon. Then she stroked his jaw lightly. “Nil… that’s really nice,” she whispered. “Thank you.” 

He shrugged easily and pulled her closer. “It’s the truth,” he said. 

She beamed at him, then stood on her tiptoes and pulled him down for another kiss. It was slow and sweet this time, her tongue delicately tasting his bottom lip before slipping sweetly into his mouth, and Nil marveled at how her cool winterfresh taste could make him feel so damn warm.

Finally she pulled away, and Nil admired the slow simmer of lust in her gaze. “Okay, let’s go,” she breathed. “I know just the place.”

****************

Nil looked around the icy cavern doubtfully. They’d been here earlier in the day to get the Tallneck actuator from the Scrapper that had salvaged it. The cavern was a good location, isolated at the end of a frozen river and clearly abandoned despite the glowing Banuk torches hung within. But there was a significant problem. 

“It’s cold,” Nil said bluntly. And the cavern was too large for a fire to heat effectively without filling it with smoke. 

Suntress smiled mischievously. “I know,” she replied. “But it won’t be soon. I have an idea. I’ll be back shortly.” She pulled her bow from her back. 

Nil’s shoulders slumped with disappointment and frustrated desire. “You’re going hunting? _Now?_ ” 

She simply laughed and walked out of the cave. “Put down the bedrolls. Then get your bow out and be ready!” she called over her shoulder.

Nil sighed with resignation, then did as she’d asked. He waited in silence by the mouth of the cave and listened for her return, but the only sounds were the eerie hooting of owls and the occasional _flump_ of heavy snow falling from a feeble pine bough.

Then he heard it: a growling roar of metallic rage. Nil snapped to attention and tapped his Focus, and seconds later he spotted Suntress’s shape outlined in purple, running back towards the cave at full speed with a Daemonic Scorcher in her wake. The metal beast was sparking with damage and stripped of its mine launcher, but still undoubtedly dangerous. 

_Oh fuck,_ Nil thought as he raised his bow, but he was confused. Why hadn’t Suntress killed the machine? He knew she was more than capable. Why was she drawing it back towards their cave? 

Soon she was within view, and Nil was surprised and confused anew at the grin on her face. “Shoot it in the eye!” she hollered. 

Nil didn’t hesitate. He aimed at the Scorcher’s lens, and his arrow destroyed the machine just as Suntress threw herself into a graceful skid and slid into the cave. Nil flung himself clear as the dead Scorcher’s momentum brought it skidding to smash against the sides of the cavern’s entrance.

Nil hefted himself to his feet, then rubbed a shaking hand over his face before turning to Suntress. She was on her knees, panting with exertion but looking very pleased with herself. 

“Did you decide you wanted a pet and forgot you couldn’t control these ones yet?” he drawled sarcastically.

She wrinkled her nose at his bolshy tone, then stood and walked over to the Scorcher. “Look,” she said, and held her hands over the Scorcher’s body. 

Nil approached her, then raised his eyebrows appreciatively: heat was visibly radiating from a series of vents in the Scorcher’s side. Suntress grinned at him. “Petra showed me how to make some parts of the machines keep working after they’re dead. I left the power cells intact on purpose.” 

Nil smiled slowly and copied Suntress, holding his hands over the soothing heat from the machine’s side. Already the air in the cave was starting to warm. “Remind me to thank Petra,” he said. 

Suntress barked out a laugh. “Now _that’s_ a sentence I never thought I’d hear you say.” She strolled over to their bedrolls and promptly started shedding her weapons and clothing. 

A searing wave of lust washed over him, heating him more thoroughly than the Scorcher’s radiator. Hungrily he watched as Suntress kicked her boots aside, then shrugged off her Banuk jacket and peeled her Oseram undershirt over her head. 

She started tugging at the laces of her Banuk pants and glanced over her shoulder at him. “Are you going to stand there and stare, or are you going to warm me up?” she asked boldly. 

Nil couldn't respond. He was distracted by the expanse of her naked back, marked with a handful of scars and tinted a ghostly white by the aqua light of the Banuk torches. It seemed like forever since he’d seen even a scrap of her skin that wasn’t her face or hands. Finally he tore his gaze from her back and looked at her amused profile. “Your skin is the most exquisite canvas of snow,” he said seriously. “So I’m going to stand here and stare. But I want you to think of my hands melting the ice of your flesh, scorching into the raw heat underneath.” 

The amusement faded from her face to be replaced by a burning lust. “Okay,” she whispered, then finally she unlaced her pants and pushed them down. 

Nil swallowed hard; a sudden rush of saliva had flooded his mouth at the sight of her naked body. She turned to face him and he gazed greedily at her nipples, puckered into hard peaks by the still-cool air in the cave. 

“Are you cold?” he asked; her arms were wrapped loosely around her middle as though to keep her heat close. 

She nodded. “It’s warmer in here now, but not quite warm yet. Which you would know if you were naked too.” She raised her chin in challenge. 

Nil smirked and pushed back his hood. “Soon,” he purred. “Remember, good things come to those who lie in wait.” 

A broad grin lit her face, and Nil grinned back. He pulled off his cowl and dropped it on the ground, then did the same with his gloves. “You should keep your fingers warm,” he said conversationally. “Find somewhere hot to put them.” He sauntered closer until he was standing in front of her, then slid his palm gently over one delicious taut nipple. She jolted slightly at his touch, arching her breast eagerly towards his hand, but Nil had moved on; his hand was sliding now over her midriff and down to her red-and-gold curls. He smiled smugly as her abs tensed with the hitching of her breath. Then he lightly he stroked two fingers between her legs. 

A satisfying keen of hunger trembled from her throat, and Nil eagerly smoothed his fingers over her slippery heat, craving the music of her desire. He nuzzled her ear gently. “Hot _and_ wet,” he purred. “Give me your hand.” 

Obediently she thrust her right hand at him. Nil slowly raised her hand to his lips, then took her index finger into his mouth and sucked gently. 

Suntress gasped, and Nil had to fight to control himself. He desperately wanted to taste other parts of her, but his primary wish in this moment was to _watch._ He removed her finger from his mouth, then lowered her hand between her legs. “Touch yourself,” he commanded. 

Immediately she slid her damp index finger into the curls between her legs, and a shudder of tension rippled over her body as she stroked her taut nub. She was just so fucking _tempting_ that Nil couldn’t resist; he cupped her neck and kissed her hard, savouring the way her lips parted with a gasp at the press of his mouth. 

She panted against his lips, and Nil gently pulled away, then pushed down on her shoulder. “On your knees,” he ordered. Immediately she knelt on the bedroll, her fingers still stroking at the apex of her thighs, and Nil took a step away from her and pulled off his vest and shirt. 

She was right; the air was tolerable on his bare skin, but not quite warm yet. As Nil stared at his naked woman, her muscles straining as she sought her pleasure, he suspected that he’d appreciate the cool temperature before this night was through. Her hazel eyes were shamelessly roving over his bare chest, and he could swear her burning stare was heating his skin as she took him in. 

Nil’s own gaze drifted back to the juncture of her thighs. In the blue light of the cave, her slick moisture shone temptingly on the inside of her thighs, and Nil unconsciously licked his lips as he admired the swirling of her fingers. Her left hand was splayed on her belly, and Nil watched with extreme interest as the fingers of her left hand clenched tensely, her knuckles turning white as she stroked herself with increasing desperation. 

Then suddenly she gasped. “Nil,” she whimpered. “I…” She craned her neck back and let out a broken cry as she reached her climax, her back arching and her whole body trembling with the effort of staying upright on her knees. 

Nil stared at her with burning satisfaction. She was so fucking _beautiful_ , and suddenly it seemed completely unfair that the masterpiece of her body would be covered by heavy layers of clothes for the next few weeks, possibly months. What the fuck had they been thinking, to come to a place that was so cold that they had to hide every scrap of skin? All Nil wanted was to stare at her. 

Finally her orgasm abated, leaving her shuddering and panting on her knees. “Come closer,” she gasped, and Nil wasted no time in following her desperate command. Hastily she grabbed for his waistband and pulled off his belt pouch, then tugged his laces loose and freed his straining erection. 

Nil groaned with ecstasy as she took his length into her mouth without a second’s hesitation. Her fingers dug into his hips as she slid him as deeply into her throat as she could take him, and Nil fisted one hand in his own hair; the smoothness of her throat and the sweet suction of her lips occupied every scrap of his attention, leaving him mindless and distracted, unable to think about anything but the _heat_ of her. Why had he been worried about the cold? He didn’t need a Scorcher’s corpse or any other source of heat but the woman on her knees in front of him. 

Suddenly Suntress released his cock and Nil gasped at the abandonment, but he couldn’t complain; she was dragging his pants down and pushing insistently at his thighs. “Get down here,” she snapped, and Nil obediently sat on the bedroll, uncaring about the fact that his pants were trapped below his knees by his boots. 

Suntress didn’t seem to care either. She straddled him smoothly and braced one hand on his shoulder, then reached down and took his cock in her hand. 

Nil gasped against her bare chest as she ran the head of his cock along the length of her slick feminine folds, spreading her smooth heat over them both. He bucked his hips in a wordless demand, but Suntress only smirked and raised herself slightly higher as she continued to slide the head of his manhood along the length of her labia. 

“Suntress, now. I need your heat _now_ ,” Nil growled, but she only smiled more widely. Her hips undulated smoothly as she spread her slick moisture over him, and Nil’s eyes fixed helplessly on the smooth motion of her body against his. 

“I thought you didn’t mind the cold,” she teased, and Nil growled at her sass, then nipped her breast with his teeth. She gave a tiny gasp, and Nil took her nipple into his mouth and suckled hungrily until she moaned and arched against his lips. 

Abruptly he released her nipple and gripped the back of her neck. “Fuck me right _now_ ,” he hissed, and finally, _finally_ she complied: she lifted her hips slightly and then took his length inside of her. 

Nil groaned in relief and luxuriated in the sound of her breathy moan against his ear. Immediately she dug her fingers into his shoulders and began riding him hard and fast. Somehow she managed to look graceful, her hips moving in a smooth, rolling rhythm despite the frenzied speed of her thrusts. Nil hissed with ecstatic pain as she suddenly bit his earlobe in the mindless throes of her pleasure. 

“Sorry,” she gasped, but Nil only laughed roughly, then pulled her face to his with a firm hand on the back of her neck. “Don’t be,” he purred. He kissed her fiercely, stroking his tongue deep into her mouth as he matched her thrust for thrust with the powerful lifting of his hips. 

She slid her hands down to his waist, and Nil broke their kiss with another gasp of pain as her nails bit into his sides. Then she pushed impatiently at his chest. “Lie back,” she whimpered, and Nil leaned back on his elbows and watched eagerly as she braced her hands on his abdomen before fucking him even faster than before. 

His climax was rising steadily, a clenching warmth that started in his abdomen and rose towards his throat, but Nil wasn’t ready to finish yet; he wanted to _watch_. He didn’t know when he’d next get to see her naked, and he didn’t want to lose the sight of her creamy skin just yet. “Easy, Suntress,” he crooned, then grabbed her right hand again. “Easy. Go slow. I want you to come with me.” 

She slowed down and gasped for breath as she ran a hand through her hair in frustration, and Nil admired the sheen of sweat at the base of her throat and her forehead. “You bastard,” she breathed, as she reached down and began stroking her clit again. 

“You know you love it,” Nil replied smugly. He relaxed back on his elbows again and watched thirstily as she arched and strained on his body, her hips moving now in a slow, sensual circle that matched the slow cycle of her fingers between her thighs. 

Fuck, but she was _magnificent._ Her whole body was trembling, the subtle planes of her midriff emphasized by the dim blue light and her nipples puckered with arousal. She was holding her breath, her neck trembling with effort as she smoothed her fingers over her sweet bud, and Nil could feel his delayed climax clawing at his chest, rising despite his wish to delay it. 

He knew the exact moment when her pleasure peaked: a tightening of her sleek heat, followed by her sudden intake of breath before she threw her head back and cried out in ecstasy. She shuddered fitfully, then started riding him again with a hard desperate speed. 

Nil couldn’t resist any longer; he was lost, lost in the tight bliss of her, and he gasped and clenched his fists in the bedroll. He shuddered as the waves of pleasure crashed over him, then slumped flat on his back and gasped for breath. 

Suntress collapsed onto his chest in exhaustion, and Nil smiled at the thudding of her heart against his skin and the warm scent of her damp hair. He wrapped his arms around her and tangled his fingers in her fiery tresses. “My blood is boiling beneath my skin,” he panted. “You might need to turn the Scorcher off.” 

She laughed and raised herself slightly to smile at him. “And when it gets cold in the middle of the night?”

“We’ll do this again,” Nil replied promptly. He smiled smugly and folded one arm under his head. 

Suntress laughed again and poked his chest in rebuke. “Or we can leave the Scorcher on _and_ do this again.” 

Nil stretched luxuriously beneath her body and grinned. “Now that’s a good plan. That kind of thinking will make you a great Chieftain.” 

She scoffed and rolled away from him, and Nil pouted slightly; he’d been enjoying her warm weight. He reached for her in an attempt to pull her back, but she was already on her knees and rifling around in his pouch belt. “Nil, tell me something. Do you really think it’s a good idea for me to be a Banuk Chieftain? Because I don’t,” she said. She fished his golden Scrappersap flask from its customary pouch, then took a swig. 

Nil frowned slightly as he took the flask from her and sipped. Was she really worried about this? “Do you actually think you’ll lose the challenge?” he asked with a smirk. The notion was laughable to him. 

She turned to face him, a small package of dried figs in her hands and a frustrated frown on her face. “That’s not the point!” she said. “When I win, I… They don’t… That thing you said before. About… them accepting me. They don’t want us here. Why would I…?” She trailed off and ran a hand through her hair, then shoved a fig in her mouth and chewed it so viciously that Nil would have thought the poor fig had done her some wrong. She swallowed hastily, then said, “Besides, I don’t want to be a Chieftain. I don’t want to be in charge of a group. And we can’t stay in the Cut. Can you imagine us settling down in one place? It’s not who we are. That’s not-” 

“Suntress,” Nil interrupted. He’d sat up and pulled his pants on while she was talking, and now he took the figs from her hands and put them on the ground before taking her hands in his. “You need to staunch these concerns before they choke you. You’re not doing this for the werak. You’re doing this for the knowledge, remember? The rest is not important.”

She glared fiercely at him, but her hands were cold and tense. “And afterwards? Then what happens?”

Nil shrugged easily. “Just tell Aratak to take over the werak again. Then we’ll leave.”

She laughed, and the sound was bitter and sharp as salvebrush berries. “It’s so simple to you, isn’t it?”

Nil frowned in confusion. Was she angry at _him?_ She seemed to be, because her voice was hard as she continued, “Everything’s been simple for you since we got here. You just… blend right in. I mean, aside from the fact that you’re obviously Carja. But nothing bothers you here. It all makes sense to you. You just…go with it.” 

Nil frowned. Now she _really_ wasn’t making sense. “But that doesn’t matter,” he said carefully. “These aren’t my people. _You_ are.” 

To Nil’s relief, she finally relaxed, her tense fingers loosening in his palms. “I know,” she said softly, then lounged on her side with a heavy sigh and propped her cheek on her fist. “This shouldn’t bother me. It _shouldn’t_. I’m used to being disliked and unwanted. I don’t know why this is so bothersome.” 

Nil flicked her hair over her shoulders, then bit off half a fig. “I told you, Suntress, you’re not accustomed to it anymore. Every Oseram calls you family… unfortunately for me,” he teased. “And half the Carja. And your precious Nora all worship you.” He smirked as she rolled her eyes, then put the rest of the fig in his mouth and lay down on his back. He pulled her close so she was pressed against his side. “These Banuk are reserved and stubbornly independent. Not unlike _you_ when we first met,” he remarked. 

She scoffed again, but she was smiling now, and Nil stroked her naked shoulders with lazy enjoyment. “Just accept that this is how they are, Suntress. Let it slide over you like the finest silk. They don’t matter. Everything that matters is right here.” 

Finally she relaxed against him fully, her head tucked against his chest. “You make it sound so easy,” she murmured. 

Nil grumbled a sleepy confirmation. “It is,” he assured her. It was just a matter of time. Suntress was good at accepting what was strange and unnerving. After all, she’d accepted him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Big thanks to [vgtravlr on Tumblr,](https://vgtravlr.tumblr.com/) who presented this smut scenario to me and which I was more than happy to shamelessly steal for this chapter. Full credit for the setup goes to this Tumblr friend. Big kisses!! Xoxo
> 
> Big thanks also to everyone else who gave suggestions for smut locations! More of them will show up as this fic goes on, and I have some oneshots planned, so I hope everyone will be happy. I don’t know why my imagination was blanking on where I could have these two getting steamy but you guys more than made up for my blanking brain ^^v


	6. Challenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: SMUT AGAIN. Bahaha!

Aloy and Nil spent the next week exploring the Cut, collecting pigments for Sekuli and visiting the Snowchants Hunting Grounds. Aloy had asked if Nil wanted to go to the bandit camp, but he’d said he wanted to save it, proclaiming himself satisfied to pick off any stragglers they met during their travels. “We’ll keep the camp to celebrate your victory in the best possible way: showered with blood and shards,” he’d said, with much macabre relish. 

And so Aloy ran the hunting trials while Nil waited patiently with Lauvak, the keeper. The Control trial was simple. Aloy already loved the Stormslinger; it had nowhere near the same precision she was used to with her bows, and she’d needed some time to learn the weapon so she could recognize when it was going to backfire, but it packed a punch that Aloy found obscene almost to the point of being funny. Needless to say, she beat the first-place time for this trial on her first attempt.

The Onslaught trial was _fun_ , but Aloy had to do it twice before beating the first-place time. As she slid down the rope back to the landing where Lauvak and Nil were waiting, she immediately held her hand up to Nil. “Don’t even say it,” she warned.

“You’re slipping,” he teased, then laughed as she strode over and shoved him in the chest. 

“I said _don’t_ say it!” she exclaimed, but she couldn’t fight the smile from her face. She turned to Lauvak, her heart pumping in anticipation. “What’s the final trial?”

Lauvak shook her head. “The final trial is not for you. Only werak Chieftains have the privilege to take on that challenge.” 

Nil grinned suddenly, and Aloy shot him a quick warning look before thanking Lauvak politely and leading Nil away from the Hunting Grounds. Once they were back on the path, she turned to Nil and said, “That’s another good reason to become the Chieftain. I’m _going_ to beat that trial.” 

Nil hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Of course you are,” he said, then kissed her hard. 

A bubble of joy rose in her chest as she kissed him back. Suddenly she started laughing against his lips, unable to hold back her happiness. The past week of exploring with Nil had been _perfect._ They’d hunted and crafted a bigger pouch to hold Aloy’s Stormslinger ammo, challenged themselves to climb every jag and peak they could find, swam in rainbow-hued pools and run away from the explosive spray of hot geysers. And in their explorations, they’d barely interacted with anyone aside from the odd merchant and passing groups of hunters. 

Nil had repeatedly said how much he enjoyed their time alone, and Aloy had to agree. The last seven days had been the longest stretch that she and Nil had travelled uninterrupted by some errand or task that Aloy had to help with. It was enough for her to start feeling grateful for the Banuk’s independence: the hunters they’d passed never asked for help, and much to Nil’s satisfaction, Aloy had been forcing herself to move on instead of offering assistance as she usually would. 

This wasn’t to say it hadn’t been hard for Aloy to move along and leave the other hunters behind. She’d been snappy with Nil at first, even though she logically knew he had a point. But it was very difficult to break out of the motto she’d followed so thoroughly for the past three years: that the strength to stand alone was the strength to help those who couldn’t. However, she supposed it was only fair to try living by Nil’s code, given that he’d lived by hers for almost a year when they’d been separated. 

Nil pulled away from her and smiled at her gleeful face. “What are you laughing about?” he asked.

She shook her head, unable to wipe away her grin. “Nothing. I’m just… having a good time. It’s nice, just the two of us. Hiding away in a secluded corner of the world… like nothing else exists.” She sighed and leaned contentedly into his solid strength. “It helps. Makes it easy to forget what’s waiting back in the rest of the world…” 

Immediately she regretted saying this as her self-doubt and worries about GAIA came rushing back. She sighed again, this time with weariness, but Nil took her face in his hands before she could turn away. “Don’t dull your mind with other concerns,” he insisted. “Challenging the Chieftain calls for a sharp spear and sharp wits. So tell me: are you ready?” 

“I know, you’re right.” Aloy took a deep breath through her nose, then exhaled determinedly. “Okay. Let’s go to Aratak.” 

*****************

Aratak was tending to his bow as Aloy approached him in Song’s Edge. “My people have been telling tales of your accomplishments,” he grunted. “It seems you’ve taken a special interest in our stretch of snow, outlander.” 

Aloy stared at him stonily. “Yes. And apparently this is the only way I’ll get to see all of it,” she gritted, then plunged her spear into the snow at his feet. 

Aratak froze. Then, slowly and disbelievingly, he raised his eyes to her face, and it was like he was finally _seeing_ her for the first time. “Is this a challenge?” he demanded.

Aloy gave a tiny sigh. “For the werak,” she said resignedly. 

Aratak surged to his feet and stared condescendingly down at her. “ _You?_ This must be a joke!”

Indignation flashed through her, and Aloy narrowed her eyes at the Banuk Chieftain. If there was one thing she would never tolerate, it was being underestimated by older men who somehow _always_ thought they were better. She lifted her chin, ready to lash out with her tongue, but a compelling voice rang out. “It is not a joke, Aratak.” 

Aratak and Aloy both turned to see Ourea approaching them, armed with a Stormslinger a perfectly calm visage. Aratak huffed in disbelief as he watched Ourea’s approach. “Now I see,” he growled. “The outlander is your pawn. And with you backing her claim, I have no choice but to accept.” He glared fiercely at Ourea. “I expected better of you, _sister._ ”

Aloy drew back in surprise and dismay as Ourea stepped up to Aratak, her face now creased with anger. “It was _you_ who forbade me from Thunder’s Drum, brother!”

Aloy glanced helplessly over her shoulder at Nil, who was standing off to the side with the rest of the werak and looking totally at ease. He shrugged, and Aloy turned back to Ourea and Aratak. “Brother and sister? This is a little more complicated than I thought,” she snapped. 

Ararak spun on her, hostility in every line of his craggy face. “No, it’s simple. You will meet me at the Frostfigures. And I’ll put a quick end to this mockery,” he snarled. Then he shoved past the two women and strode away towards the path out of Song’s Edge. 

Aloy turned and raised her eyebrows at Ourea, who tilted her head slightly. “I suppose I owe you an explanation,” Ourea said.

Aloy folded her arms in disbelief. _Now that’s an understatement,_ she thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nil drifting casually towards them. “Yeah, I suppose you do. So why didn’t you tell me that you and Aratak are siblings?” she demanded.

“I thought I wouldn’t have to,” Ourea said with a tiny shrug. “I’m surprised he brought it up in front of a stranger. He must be very angry.” Then she sighed. “I’m not always the best judge of…” 

“People?” Aloy deadpanned, and behind her, Nil gave a tiny snort of amusement. 

Ourea cut a sharp look at Nil, then returned her gaze to Aloy. “I prefer the company of spirits… or simply my own. I didn’t want you to think of our pilgrimage as some sort of family squabble. It’s much more important than that.”

Aloy sighed and idly tugged the end of one braid; this was true. If the expedition to Thunder’s Drum brought her even a step closer to resurrecting GAIA, it was worth getting unwittingly involved in a little family drama.

Finally Aloy dropped her hands to her hips. “Fine. What’s this challenge meant to be, anyway?”

Ourea’s shoulders relaxed slightly with relief. “You and Aratak will hunt machines at the Frostfigures. The victor will be the fastest. It won’t be easy.” 

“Aloy conquered the first place times at the Snowchants Hunting Grounds,” Nil interjected. He smirked smugly at Ourea. “Your worries are unfounded. This challenge will be easy for her.” 

Aloy shot Nil an exasperated look, even as she felt a rush of fondness for him. Nil had always had a bad habit of bragging about her. But Ourea raised her chin and gave Nil an appraising look. “Your faith in your partner is… admirable,” she said quietly. “Only the strongest hunters are worthy of such praise.” Ourea’s gaze returned to Aloy, and there was something slightly wistful painted over the shamaness’s characteristically stern face. “I have high hopes that you’ll live up to his words.” 

Aloy inclined her head neutrally; as always, she would let her deeds speak for themselves. “Ourea, I want to know what’s inside Thunder’s Drum. The Spirit, the Daemon, how it all connects to the machines… But if we’re going to go through with this, I need you to be straight with me,” she said firmly. “You can’t keep anything from me if we’re going to go into this prepared.”

Ourea nodded in serious acquiescence. “I understand. I underestimated you, and Aratak. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Aloy leaned back and nodded with satisfaction. “See you at the Frostfigures, then.” She and Nil turned away and headed back toward the main settlement to trade some bluegleam and resources. 

“Off to risk my life in order to take charge of a Banuk hunting band,” Aloy muttered resentfully to Nil. “Just what I always wanted.”

Nil suddenly slung and arm around her neck and pulled her roughly towards him, and Aloy laughed as he kissed her temple noisily. “Stop complaining, Suntress. Soon you’ll have Aratak on his knees. And then remember what we’ll be doing?” He raised his eyebrows in high anticipation, and Aloy rolled her eyes.

“Hmm, I don’t know. Hunting for bluegleam?” she said innocently, then squeaked as Nil pinched her waist in rebuke. “No,” he drawled. “Hunting for something better. The most glorious kind of hunt. Those joyful crimson splashes will soon decorate these white lands. Ahh, I can picture the canvas already… I wager our work will outshine even Sekuli’s mural.” 

Aloy wriggled out from under Nil’s arm and lightly punched him in the stomach. “You’d rather look at a bunch of bloody snow than a painting of me?” she teased. “That hurts.” 

Nil cocked an eyebrow at her. “Why would I look at a painting of you when I’m constantly rendered witless by the real thing? No pigments could ever evoke an image as vibrant as you.” 

Aloy blushed and looked around self-consciously; she and Nil were attracting quite a few hard stares from the settlers of Song’s Edge with their affectionate joshing around, and Nil’s loud compliments were drawing yet more negative attention. A little wave of sadness and frustration washed over her. It had never been this hard for her to stick to her secondary motto of doing as the locals did. “Okay, okay,” she muttered, and tugged Nil towards the merchants’ tents. “Let’s get our stupid wire and get out of here.”

***********************

That evening, Nil and Suntress climbed the hill at the base of the Frostfigures to find Aratak and Ourea waiting. Before Ourea and Aratak spotted them, Nil took hold of Suntress’s armoured arm; she had changed into her shieldweaver outfit in anticipation of the challenge. 

She turned to him, her face creased in a determined frown. “What is it?” she said distractedly. She was so focused on the challenge to come that Nil could practically see the arrows flying behind her eyes.

Nil shrugged, then smirked. “I love you,” he said.

Suntress’s face relaxed instantly, and though a tiny crease remained between her eyebrows, she smiled at him. “I love you too,” she said softly, then hooked her fingers around his hooded neck and kissed him. “And… thanks,” she whispered. “For… you know. The encouragement.”

Nil shrugged again. “A well-intentioned kick in the ass is all you needed,” he murmured, and Suntress huffed in amusement before nipping his earlobe playfully and releasing him to approach the Banuk siblings. 

Nil stood quietly to the side and folded his arms, more than ready to enjoy the show. Ourea nodded welcomely to Suntress, but Aratak’s face was like unsculpted stone as he gazed down at her. 

“I have prevailed over such challenges before, and fear none,” Aratak said, and Nil was surprised by the gentleness in his voice. “But this one is foolish. You are not Banuk. You do not understand my responsibilities. I ask you, one hunter to another: withdraw.” He glanced very briefly at Ourea from the corner of his eye.

True to form, Suntress didn’t back down. Instead, she raised her chin even higher. “Will you let us go to Thunder’s Drum?” she asked, her voice low and intense.

Aratak flared with anger. “You have not seen what’s up there, outlander! I will _not_ risk my sister’s life again!”

“Then we’d better get on with this,” Suntress replied, and firmly turned her back on the Chieftain to stand at Ourea’s right side.

Aratak snarled, then stomped back to Ourea’s left. “So be it! I will bury your insolent claim in the frozen ground!” 

“Enough!” Ourea barked. “Let us begin. To hunt: to strive. That is the way of the Banuk, and of the contest before you.” Nil listened as Ourea explained the contest, and he couldn’t help but grin: this contest was practically made for Suntress. He chuckled quietly to himself. He truly didn’t understand why Suntress seemed to be having such a hard time getting along with these Banuk; their love for machine hunting matched hers perfectly. 

“The hunt begins on my mark,” Ourea announced, then held her Stormslinger high. Nil watched Suntress hungrily; she was crouched slightly, her fingers twitching tensely as she waited for Ourea’s mark. She looked like a Stalker ready to spring, and Nil felt an answering thrill in his blood from the sheer electric energy rolling from her skin. 

“Now!” Ourea shouted, and Suntress was _gone_ , sprinting to the base of the short hill, her flame-red hair flying behind her like a victory flag. Nil approached the ledge and stood beside Ourea so he could see more clearly as Suntress ran towards the base of the Frostfigures, then grabbed a handhold on the side of the mountain and began launching herself upwards. Nil was unable to tear his eyes from her slender figure as she hefted herself onto a ledge and leapt for an even higher shelf of rock. 

He and Ourea watched quietly until Aratak and Suntress’s tiny silhouettes disappeared over the top of the mountain and to the other side. Ourea gave a small sigh. “Now we wait,” she said, and Nil nodded wordlessly. 

Two minutes later, a balloon floated up from the right side of the mountain: a clear signal of Suntress’s victory over the first phase of the challenge. Nil smirked as Aratak’s balloon lifted into the sky a moment later. 

Ourea nodded briefly, a tiny smile on her lips. “She’s good, your wife. Strong, and smart.” 

Nil folded his arms and grinned. “Yes, she is,” he said proudly. 

Ourea shifted her weight slightly, and she and Nil were quiet for a moment longer. Then the shamaness’s voice broke the silence. “You have complete faith in her. There is no doubt in your mind that she’s capable.” 

It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Nil answered anyway. “It’s not a matter of faith. She _is_ capable. Any task that falls into her lap is easily conquered. There’s not a single enemy she hasn’t left for dead in the dust. Or snow, depending on your location.” He smirked briefly, his eyes on the horizon to watch for the next balloon.

Ourea was also facing the horizon, but Nil could feel her gaze from the corner of her eyes. She was quiet for a long moment, then shifted her weight again. “Such trust in another person. That’s… rare to see.” 

Nil shrugged, and he and Ourea continued to wait in silence. Then Ourea spoke again, and her voice was musing, as though she wasn’t aware that she was talking out loud. “Your belief in Aloy… It mirrors my communion with the Spirit. I would follow the Spirit unflinchingly as well. That’s why I must go on this pilgrimage. I _must_ speak with her again.”

Nil frowned at Ourea. “It’s not the same. Your… commitment is a matter of religion,” he said bluntly. “Mine is a matter of flesh and blood, of something _real_.” He shifted restlessly and scowled. “And I don’t follow unflinchingly,” he muttered. Ourea might think that mindlessly following some religious icon was a good thing, but her words poked at him like the point of a spear, reminding him unpleasantly of Vanasha’s warnings in the not-so-distant past: _Nobody should just follow their partner without question._

Nil didn’t do that anymore. He was being careful. He was here now because _he_ wanted to be. 

Ourea turned to look at Nil in mild confusion. “I’ve offended you,” she said softly, then sighed. “I apologize. This was not my intent.”

Nil shrugged moodily and didn’t answer, and after a moment, Ourea turned back to face the Frostfigures. A moment later, the rightward balloon floated into the air, followed closely by the left, and Ourea nodded her head to the side. “Come. We should head for the valley.”

Nil followed her to the base of the hills, and together they jogged silently in the direction of the valley where Suntress and Aratak would meet their final prey. But as they approached the valley, Nil heard the sounds of crying and groans of pain… sounds that usually pleased him if he was the cause, but at this moment, these sounds made his blood run cold. _Suntress._

“Something is wrong,” Ourea said tensely. 

“What tipped you off?” Nil snarled. He pulled his bow from his back, and together he and Ourea sprinted into the valley. 

The scene was utter chaos. A few dead Banuk hunters were leaching their lifeblood into the ground. The usual smooth blanket of snow was in total disarray, tamped down in some places and scraped aside so thoroughly in others that scraggly grass was showing underneath. Shards and components littered the valley, and huge jagged spikes of ice rose from the ground like the teeth of some monstrous beast. Nil knew of only one creature that caused that type of ice formation: a Frostclaw. 

Usually Nil would have stood back and revelled in such a delicious scene of violence, but the only sight that would satisfy him now was the familiar glitter of her armour, that characteristic ripple of her red hair. “Suntress!” he bellowed, uncaring what anyone else thought; fuck this challenge, and fuck the werak. If she was hurt-

“Here,” she called, her voice faint and breathy, and Nil whipped around to see her staggering down off the sparking body of a destroyed Frostclaw with her spear in hand… and in the distance, two more Frostclaw corpses, marred with blast damage from sling bombs and riddled with Suntress’s characteristic precision and tearblast arrows. Nil’s jaw dropped. She’d had to take out three Frostclaws at once?

Suntress slowly made her way towards Nil, and his heart seized in his chest; her fingertips and lips were blue with cold, and her entire body was trembling. He reached out a shaking hand to support her, but to his surprise, she smiled. “Takes more than a few machines to stop me,” she managed through her chattering teeth.

Nil’s brain felt as frozen as her hands; he couldn’t find it in himself to make a clever reply. He clasped her frigid fingers as he rifled in his pouch belt. “Here,” he said, and thrust a small bottle of freeze rime extract at her. He was violently grateful that they’d thought to stock up in Song’s Edge before setting out. He was vaguely aware of Ourea, Aratak and the rest of the werak gathering some ways away to examine the nearest Frostclaw.

Suntress took the bottle and downed it in two gulps, then sighed with relief as her trembling immediately lessened. “Thanks,” she said. 

Nil tucked one of her braids behind her ear and breathed slowly through his nose, trying hard to calm his residual panic. He felt jittery still, like there was a bird trapped in his chest trying to escape, but Suntress’s remarkable lack of injuries helped to soothe him; aside from an already-forming bruise on her left cheekbone, she looked largely unharmed. “Do I need to strip you and check for injuries?” he asked with a half-hearted smile. 

She let out a wild laugh, further calming Nil’s jangling nerves. “That would be nice,” she quipped, but her smile faded swiftly into a serious frown. “This Frostclaw attack wasn’t intentional. Aratak said this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Nil frowned as one of the hunters stood back from the defunct Frostclaw, and his words confirmed what Suntress had just said. “So it’s true,” he exclaimed. “Frostclaws from Thunder’s Drum!”

Another hunter broke in, her cold eyes fixed on Suntress. “The attack cut short the competition. Naturally there can be no result. It is void.”

Suntress gave a sudden bark of laughter, her face twisted with disgust. “These bloody hunters,” she gritted in quiet frustration. 

Then Aratak was approaching them slowly, his face as forbidding as ever despite the cold blue of his own lips. Defensively Suntress lifted her chin and her spear, and Nil shifted restlessly, his hand hovering close to his knife and his blood surging with anticipated violence.

Aratak stared intently down at Suntress, but his voice was an authoritative growl as he addressed the werak. “You saw what she did. _She_ defeated the machines, not I.” Suddenly he grabbed the head of Suntress’s spear, and Nil instinctively gripped the hilt of his knife as Aratak spoke again. “It is proven. _She_ is the better hunter.” 

Nil relaxed immediately and released his weapon. _Good. He’s seeing her for the force of nature that she is,_ he thought. He knew these Banuk were a sensible people.

Aratak gazed down at Suntress, her spearhead still clasped in his fist. “We are Banuk,” he said, and again, his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “Survive. Prevail. What else matters?” 

Suntress nodded slightly, but Nil noticed the narrowing of her eyes at Aratak’s words. Aratak then released her spear and raised his bleeding hand high. “My blood is in your teeth,” he announced. “I take my place behind you on the hunt.”

A wave of movement behind Aratak drew Nil’s attention, and he grinned with vindictive satisfaction: the rest of the werak had lifted their spears to the sky in recognition of Suntress’s victory. They really were a sensible people. 

Then Ourea pushed her way through the hunters to stand beside Suntress. “No more hunters may make the ascent to Thunder’s Drum,” she announced. “The way is closed to all but the Chieftain, her partner, and myself!”

“It is not my place, but I would ask a boon: to accompany you and my sister,” Aratak said. He bowed his head humbly, and Nil was pleased at how quickly he seemed to be accepting Suntress’s dominance. But before Suntress could reply, the shamaness spoke again. “It _might_ be permitted. But only if you do as I say,” she said.

Suntress whirled towards Aratak and Ourea. “No,” she snapped, and Nil smirked; he never tired of her commanding tone, her voice crackling with electric authority. She swelled to her full height as she faced the siblings. “Only if you both do as _I_ say,” she declared, and Ourea and Aratak bowed their heads obediently. 

Aratak walked back towards the rest of the werak, and Ourea gazed at Suntress and Nil. “Thunder’s Drum awaits,” she said. “There’s a camp at its base; Longnotch, it’s called. Meet us there when you’re ready.” Then the corners of her eyes lifted in a subtle smile. “Chieftain,” she said softly, then walked away to join her brother. 

Suntress stood tall and watched impassively as the werak collected their dead and walked away. But as soon as the werak had disappeared down the snowy hills, she slumped against Nil. “I’m exhausted,” she groaned, then dropped to her knees in the snow. “I need to rest before we travel anywhere. Do you mind?”

Nil shook his head and hunkered down beside her with another bottle of freeze rime extract in his hand, and Suntress took it gratefully. “No. It’s time to rest anyway. It’s the dead of night,” Nil reasoned, and Suntress raised her face to the starry sky and laughed tiredly. “Of course. Fire and spit, I’m so tired I didn’t notice.” 

Nil unpacked their travel gear and began to set up camp. They’d bought a very small fur-lined Banuk tent upon their arrival in Song’s Edge, and Nil solicitously arranged a fox-fur blanket around Suntress’s shoulders before building a fire and setting up the tent. He packed snow around the edges of the tent to keep drafts out, as the Banuk merchant had instructed, then lay the bedrolls out, one on the ground to insulate from the cold and the second on top to use as a blanket for both himself and Suntress. Once Nil was satisfied that their tiny accommodations were suitable, he slipped out of the tent. “I’ll hunt. You’re deserving of fresh meat,” he announced. 

But Suntress shook her head. “No, stay here. We’ll eat the dried goat’s meat tonight.” 

Nil frowned, but sat beside her by the fire. “Are you sure? Dried meat isn’t nearly as satisfying as a freshly bleeding kill. And besides, you need bloody meat to keep your hair red, remember?”

Suntress snorted a laugh at the memory of the hapless shaman they’d met in an abandoned cabin of the Old Ones, and who had frankly incorrect-sounding ideas about ancient animals. The shaman’s theory about why foxes have red fur had been particularly amusing to Nil. Suntress nudged him chidingly with her shoulder. “Give him a break,” she said. “Enjuk was trying his best. And who knows, maybe some of his ideas are right.” 

Nil snorted doubtfully, then pulled out the dried goat’s meat and figs. Suntress poked one hand out of the blanket to take some food, and Nil was satisfied to see that her fingers were no longer blue with cold. They ate in companionable silence for some time. 

Eventually Suntress swallowed her last bite of fig and licked her fingers. “Survive and prevail,” she said slowly, then gave a tiny huff of disdain. “What do you think of that?”

Nil shrugged casually as he bit off another mouthful of meat. “Words to live by,” he replied. In his opinion, it was quite a good motto: no nonsense, no room for interpretation, no need to think about anything aside from one’s own strength and will. 

Suntress huffed again, more forcefully this time. “In theory, maybe. In practice, though…”

Nil chewed for a moment, then swallowed and said, “What do you mean?”

Suntress turned to him a slight frown. “There’s a difference between surviving and _living._ The Banuk… at least, the ones we’ve met… they don’t seem to feel that way.” She turned back to the fire, a pensive look on her face. “If everything you have goes into just staying alive, what’s left afterwards? 

Nil tilted his head to one side quizzically. “But life _is_ staying alive. That bloody scrabble to vanquish your enemy, to stay on the better side of the knife: how else will you know your worth if not by surviving?”

She looked at him, and Nil frowned in confusion at the sadness in her face. “But that’s not all there is to life, Nil. It’s more than just a heartbeat and a breath. It’s more than just... moving from day to day. It has to be,” she said. And suddenly Nil understood what she meant.

During his separation from Suntress, when he’d travelled with Luka and Taran, he’d felt like nothing but a shell: a heart to keep his body moving and lungs to breathe, but nothing more. _That_ was survival. Being with Suntress now, their travelling and exploring, _this_ was living. 

An echo of that past desolation pulled at Nil’s chest and he rubbed a hand over his hair, but Suntress spoke again. “There needs to be… hope. For something more than just... being alive.” She turned to look at him, a pensive frown on her face. “You don’t really think that survival is all there is to life, do you?”

Nil understood Suntress’s argument, and he had to admit she had a point. But for the second time today, someone was picking at him, making him think of the past, to relive the ugly times before he and Suntress had been reunited, and he hated it. Suddenly he felt inexplicably edgy.

“What’s the point of this speculation?” Nil demanded. He pulled out of his flask of Scrappersap and took a large gulp. “Let the Banuk survive instead of living if they want. It’s their prerogative. As long as you get the answers you’re looking for, why bother trying to pick apart their ways? You’re like a trainee healer, trying to lift the scabs of necrotic flesh, thinking there’s something underneath other than rot.”

He gulped again from his flask then offered it to Suntress, but she only stared at him. “What’s wrong, Nil?” she said. “My questions have never bothered you before. Why are you so angry?”

Nil pulled a hand through his hair again. “I’m _not_ angry,” he insisted, then realized instantly that this just made it sound like he was. He took a deep breath, then more calmly he said, “Your questions don’t bother me. You know I enjoy the unstoppable deluge of your curiosity.” He threw her a winning smile, but unfortunately it didn’t succeed at deflecting her; she continued to frown at him.

Nil sighed, then cupped her cold cheek in his palm. “Suntress, you always say so yourself: when in foreign lands, do as the locals do. For some reason, you’re finding that difficult here. So why not just… relish the difference? You’ve never been one to shy away from what’s strange. Don’t let this be any different.”

She continued to stare at him, but her expression was vulnerable now instead of sharp, and Nil relaxed; he could tell by her face that she wasn’t going to push him any further. Finally she sighed, then leaned forward to press her forehead to his. “Sorry,” she whispered.

Nil shook his head slightly. “Don’t be. It’s been a long day. The victory of battle is sweet at first, but the fatigue that follows is undeniably bitter.” Briefly he kissed her lips before placing another portion of meat in her hand. “Eat some more and you’ll feel better.” 

She chuckled tiredly, then chewed slowly on the meat as she leaned against his shoulder. They sat in companionable silence until Suntress had finished her food and taken a few fortifying gulps of Scrappersap. 

Finally Nil took a handful of snow and rubbed it between his hands to clean them, then turned to Suntress. “Now it’s time to check you for wounds. Get in the tent and strip.” 

Just as Nil had hoped, his words chased the brooding look from her face. She laughed at his bluntness, but shook her head slightly. “Nil, I’d love to, but I’m really tired.”

“I know you are,” he said casually. For once, he actually _didn’t_ want to fuck her; he simply wanted to relax her in the best way he knew how. He tilted her chin up with a gentle finger, then slowly stroked his fingers along the line of her throat. “Just go lie down. I’ll take care of you. If you want.” He slowly lowered his face to hers and delicately traced his tongue along the fine line of her lower lip.

Her tiny, shuddering breath warmed his lips, and Nil smiled. “Do you want more of this?” he whispered. 

“Yes,” she breathed. Nil lightly licked the center of her upper lip, then _very_ gently nipped her lower lip until a tiny moan escaped her. Then he pulled away and brushed her lower lip with his thumb, satisfied to find her mouth flushed pink with desire. 

“Go and get in the tent,” he purred. “Take off your clothes and get under the covers. Then I’ll kiss you again.” Then, very deliberately, Nil dropped his gaze to her blanket-covered lap, then lifted his eyes to gaze intently at her. “If that’s what you want.”

Her pupils were blown wide with lust, and Nil admired the movement of her throat as she swallowed hard, but he didn’t move. He wouldn’t move until she said it. 

Finally, with a tiny whimper of desire, she breathed the word he was looking for. “ _Yes,_ ” she said, then she stood, hastily shedding the fox-fur blanket before crawling into the tent. 

Nil smirked with satisfaction and picked up the fox-fur blanket so it wouldn’t get covered in snow. Then he ate a fig while he waited for her to get undressed. While he chewed, he listened to the unmistakable clanking of her armour being removed, then a subtle rustling as she slid under the cover of the bedroll. 

And then Nil ate another fig very slowly. Suntress was usually impatient during their amorous encounters, volatile and hot as a blazefire, and Nil deeply enjoyed provoking her fire by withholding his attentions. Sure enough, after a few minutes of delay, her irate voice floated out of the tent. “Have you been abducted by a stray Frostclaw? Are you coming or what?”

Nil chuckled. _Not tonight I’m not,_ he thought, but without a hint of disappointment. She’d made an excellent show of strength today, and Nil couldn’t think of a better way to praise her than by giving her an utterly relaxing burst of pleasure without her having to work for it. 

Finally he rose and entered the tent. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it was palpably warmer in here, even though Suntress was the only source of heat. The Banuk really knew what they were doing with these tents. 

Suntress had done as he’d said, and was curled under the bedroll on her side. Nil spread the fox-fur blanket over her for an extra layer of warmth, then knelt beside her. “Are you warm enough?” he asked.  
She propped her cheek on her fist and gave him a challenging look. “I guess. But it’ll be better when you get in here with me,” she retorted. “Why am I always the naked one?” 

“Because I’m a spoiled and lucky man,” Nil replied smoothly. Then, before she could reply, he peeled back the covers. 

His gaze stuck helplessly on the pale curve of her hip and the curls between her legs, and he swallowed. “Lie on your back,” he said, and his voice sounded guttural even to his own ears. 

Immediately she complied, and Nil pushed her knees up into a bent position, then kneeled between her legs. Reverently he reached up and smoothed his fingers lightly from her chin down the center of her throat. He stroked the tender notch at the base of her throat, that notch where the sweat collected so enticingly when she was riding him. Then his fingers continued their trailing path along her left collarbone and down over the pearl of her nipple. 

She arched gracefully into his touch, and Nil had to take a deep breath to control the sudden rush of adoration that washed over him. He wasn’t being charming when he said he was spoiled and lucky; sometimes he still couldn’t believe this fierce, unstoppable demon had chosen _him_ , that he was the one she wanted by her side, that he was the man whose hands she’d chosen to play her so carefully until she sang her pleasure like the finest braumdrum. 

Quietly he exhaled; he didn’t want to distract her with idle words of love right now. He brushed his thumb over the sweet underside of her breast, savouring the smoothness of her skin just _there_ , then leaned forward and braced his weight over her to run his tongue across her nipple. 

She jerked, then mewled with pleasure under his mouth. He palmed the gentle swell of her right breast, then abruptly nipped her left nipple with his teeth while lightly pinching the right. 

She jerked again, and her tiny gasp shivered into the air like the first sweet note of a favourite song. Nil smiled against her skin, then abraded her left nipple gently with his facial hair before suckling firmly. 

Her thighs tensed against his waist, and suddenly she was cradling his head with her hands, her fingernails digging into his hair. “Nil,” she gasped, and bucked her hips.

He lifted his mouth from her breast, then sat back on his knees and admired her: her cheeks and lips were flushed, her skin satisfyingly hot under his hands. “For such a stealthy huntress, you’re certainly impatient,” he purred. “Is there something you want to say?” 

“You promised me a kiss,” she blurted, and Nil couldn’t help but laugh. When Suntress was desperate like this, there was nothing coy about her: her body was spread wide, reading like the most exquisite book of erotic Carja poetry.

“So I did,” he replied. “I suppose I’d better make good on my promises. I wouldn’t want to invite some kind of Nora malediction.” 

“I’ve had enough of those thrown at me in the past,” she panted distractedly as Nil slid down her body. “Maybe I should pass it forward- oh _Goddess!_ ” Suntress threw her head back and cried out as Nil pressed his lips firmly against her clit in a hot open-mouthed kiss.

Nil hummed with satisfaction as he lapped his tongue over her slick moisture, then lifted his face and smiled. “That almost sounded like a malediction. Or was it praise?”

“Damn it, Nil, don’t _stop!_ ” she gasped, and Nil chuckled, then lowered his mouth to her pussy again. Gently he lapped at her with a sweet, firm rhythm, stroking his tongue gently up along the length of her labia to circle over her swollen bud. 

Soon she was rolling her hips in time with the strokes of his tongue, and Nil savoured the sound of her heavy breathing. As he pressed his lips to her clit again, he raised his eyes to look at her; her head was thrown back, exposing the tense tendons of her neck, and the undulating motion of her hips rolled back along her midriff and breasts, reminding him forcibly of the stormy waves on Brightmarket’s bay. 

Nil lifted his face and smoothed his fingers over her heat. Her labia were plump and pomegranate-pink with arousal, and as Nil gazed down at her feminine center, he felt that untimely surge of love again. Reverently he slid two fingers into her tight, sleek warmth, and her trembling gasp seemed to echo the trembling tenderness in his chest. Feeling oddly vulnerable, Nil buried his mouth between her legs again and lapped at her wetness while slowly thrusting his fingers inside of her. 

Suntress clenched her fists in the bedroll and keened with ecstasy, and Nil inhaled deeply to try and quell the distracting roil of emotion in his chest, but his sharp inhale only served to draw his attention to her scent. A fresh wave of passionate love smashed over him, overwhelming him so that he could hardly breathe. Despite the quintessentially carnal act he was now performing, he couldn’t stop thinking about how _he_ was the man she’d picked to taste her, the one who had permission to revel in the scent of her that could only be savoured _here_ , in this position of privilege between her legs. 

In this moment, this intimate moment of raw lust, her trust in him was so patently obvious that all Nil could think about was how much he fucking _loved_ her. But he was fairly sure she’d be irate if he stopped licking her in order to say so. Instead, he redoubled his efforts, focusing every scrap of his attention on her heady sweet-and-salty flavour, the perfect slide of her clit against his tongue, the exquisite tightening of her heat around his fingers as she suddenly gasped and smothered her cry of ecstasy against the back of her hand. 

Nil continued diligently to lap at her sweet center with lessening pressure as the tension of climax gradually left her body. Once she had relaxed and stilled on the bedroll, Nil gently kissed the inside of her thigh, then wiped his face roughly on her thigh. 

She huffed out a little laugh. “Nice,” she murmured sleepily, and Nil smirked as he rose to his knees and stripped off his clothes. It was almost stiflingly warm in the tent now, but Nil didn’t mind; it meant Suntress wouldn’t be tempted to put any clothing on. 

Once naked, he lay beside her and pulled the covers over them, then gathered her back against his chest in their customary sleeping position. She wiggled her bottom slightly against the unavoidable hardness of his cock, sending a jolt of pleasure through his abdomen. “That’s nice,” she said, but the slurred quality of her speech told Nil she was close to slumber. 

“Ripping an orgasm from your throat is always a call to arms for my lustful sword. Just ignore it,” he murmured. “Rest and sleep.” 

She breathed a gentle laugh into the crook of her arm. “That’s… actually kind of sweet,” she mumbled. “Good night, Nil.” 

Nil smiled into her hair. “Sweet dreams, Suntress.” He lay quietly beside her, inhaling the warm scent of her hair and her skin as her breathing gradually slowed with sleep. 

Nil didn’t feel particularly tired; he knew he should get up to tamp out the fire, but he was too comfortable right now. So he propped his head on his fist and looked down at his sleeping wife. Gently he brushed the fine hairs away from her forehead, then traced the shape of her Focus with fond amusement; she almost never took it off, even when she was sleeping. The only time he could remember her removing it was when they’d visited Rost’s grave, and when Luka had married them on the mesa overlooking the Spearshafts.

On impulse, he lowered his lips to her ear. He knew she wouldn’t hear him, but he had to say it; he felt like he’d implode if he didn’t. “I’ll always survive and prevail, Suntress,” he whispered. “I still think they’re good words. But I _live_ for you and only you. I hope you know that.”

She stirred slightly and gave a little sigh, but didn’t wake. Nil kissed her ear lightly, then lay down and savoured the warmth of her body for a while longer before reluctantly rising to put out the fire. 

He and Suntress might not agree on everything, but Nil has long decided that she was worth any disagreements that might arise.

To him, she was worth everything.


	7. Tribal Law

Aloy woke early the next morning as usual. The bruise on her left cheek ached from a stray chunk of ice she hadn’t managed to dodge, and her muscles were sore; otherwise, she felt remarkably fine, considering the unprecedented triple Frostclaw attack from the day before. 

Carefully she rolled over to face Nil, who was still fast asleep. For a moment Aloy simply stared unabashedly at the soot-black crescents of his eyelashes, and a butterfly-delicate thread of tenderness pulled at her heart. 

Aloy felt so grateful to have Nil here. She knew he’d wanted to come on this trip north, but somehow - to Aloy’s deep disgruntlement - the trip had become centered on _her_ : finding _her_ answers, completing _her_ challenge for the position of werak Chieftain. Nil had every right to be annoyed, but somehow he’d borne it all with good humour. Aside from last night’s outburst, that is.

Aloy basked in Nil’s heat for a moment longer, then quietly slid out from under the covers. Nil didn’t wake, but his eyebrows contracted briefly in a frown, and he pursed his lips before settling again. Aloy slugged back an ochrebloom potion for her muscles, quickly pulled on her stealth hunter outfit, then kissed Nil on the cheek and slipped out of the tent to hunt a rabbit for breakfast. 

As she pulled her scarf over her mouth and nose and silently slipped into a nearby copse of pine trees, Aloy pondered the discussion she and Nil had had last night. She couldn’t decide if it constituted an actual argument or not. Aloy had been so tired that she still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. It seemed like one moment they were just talking, and the next moment Nil was lashing out at her uncharacteristically. 

_He really must agree with the Banuk if he’s defending them so strongly,_ she thought. On the one hand, Aloy was pleased there were people that Nil finally seemed to feel comfortable around; he only barely tolerated the Oseram and Carja as it was, and he liked the Nora about as much as they liked him. But something about Nil’s unusual snappishness last night made her feel a faint crawling of unease over her scalp as she crouched in the tall grass and tapped her Focus. 

Her thoughts turned to food as a tiny purple shadow lit up through her Focus. _There. Rabbit, ten paces to the south,_ she thought. Slowly she pulled an arrow from her quiver, then shot the rabbit easily and jogged back to the tent.

Nil was sitting outside the tent building up the fire when she approached. His hood was pulled up, obscuring his face in shadow, but his silver-eyed smile was as warm as ever as Aloy came to sit next to him, and the hint of awkward tension in her shoulders dissolved as he pulled her scarf down and kissed her. “Mm, winterfresh,” he murmured, and Aloy smiled cheekily, then handed him the rabbit to skin and spit while she pulled out the dried figs and set some snow to melt in Petra’s little collapsible pot. 

Their breakfast was as pleasant as ever, and she and Nil joked around good-naturedly while striking camp. By the time they were back on the path and headed east, Aloy felt normal again; any residual misgivings she’d had that morning were gone, like meltwater carrying away a troublesome floe of ice. 

Nil, in fact, was more cheerful than usual given that they were headed to Stone Yield for his favourite activity: hunting bandits. He hummed to himself as they strolled along the snowy path, his thumb running lovingly over the pommel of his knife. 

“Gildun’s right, you know,” Aloy remarked. “You do have a nice singing voice. You should make up a song about our travels.” She bit the inside of her cheek to hide her smile. 

Nil raised an eyebrow at her. “I may be a master of many weapons, Suntress, but a musician’s quill is not one of them.”

“Are you sure? You could sing to Avad when we go back to Meridian. Put on a show. Vanasha could find you a mummer’s outfit-” 

Aloy squawked with surprise as she suddenly found herself swept off her feet and dumped into a large snowbank. She spat out a mouthful of hair and snow and glared up at her husband. “ _Nil!_ You- stupid-!”

He was standing over her, his arms folded and a satisfied grin on his face. “Now there’s a line I would weave into song: how I dumped the werak Chieftain into a pile of snow.” Then, to make the moment even more ludicrous, he _actually_ started to sing. “In a bed of white she lay, mock a murderer and he’ll make her pay…” 

Aloy grabbed a handful of snow and whipped it at his face, and suddenly they were both laughing. Nil sat beside her in the snow, and she patted his arm patronizingly. “Better stick to hunting,” she wheezed.

“It was _your_ terrible idea,” Nil retorted. “I simply had to prove you wrong. Blood is the medium in which I scribe my deeds, not ink.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Aloy said. Then she froze as a familiar metallic chirrup reached her ears. 

Nil tapped his Focus and confirmed her suspicions: “Two Longlegs, two Watchers. Twenty paces away.” 

_Damn,_ Aloy thought, but with no real pique. She and Nil were being careless with their goofing around; it was their own fault. And yet... “Not even a challenge,” she whispered to Nil. “Let’s just attack them head-on.”

Nil slowly turned his head to look at her. “That’s so… sloppy.” But a smile was gradually lighting his face. Aloy couldn’t help but smile back; she knew that the messy approach - tearing off components with his bare hands - was the only way that Nil got any satisfaction from machine hunting. 

Hence her suggestion. “I know it’s sloppy,” she agreed. “Look, we’ll blow out the Longlegs’ air bladders so we won’t get blasted with noise, then we’ll jump them. You won’t even need to use your bow.” 

Nil was fully grinning now, his eyes glowing with zeal. Abruptly he fisted a hand in her scarf and pulled her towards him, then he kissed her hard, his tongue sliding firmly against hers. 

Aloy gripped his arms as a fresh bolt of desire slammed through her. Eagerly she returned Nil’s kiss, then gasped as he broke away from her abruptly. 

“Are you flirting with me? Because it’s working,” he murmured, a sensual growl underlining his words. 

A surge of affection deepened the lust in Aloy’s veins, and her mind was too muzzy with desire to respond with anything more than a breathy laugh. “Come on, Carja, let’s do this,” she whispered. 

Exactly as expected, the fight was _dirty_ but quick, and soon the snow was littered with components and twisted metal. Nil stood proudly in the middle of the pile of metal corpses, panting for breath. “This is just an appetizer, a taste of the chaos to come,” he announced. “Behind closed eyes, these sparkling shards become shards of flesh.” Sure enough, he closed his eyes and smiled with utter contentment, then showed his palms to Aloy. They were scratched and red-raw from tearing components from the machines. “My hands are stinging now, but a crimson heat will soothe them soon,” he told her happily. 

“Or a little hintergold paste,” she replied pointedly, but she couldn’t help but smile as she fished the pot of hintergold from one of her pouches. She made Nil hold his palms flat, then smeared the paste on his hands and bandaged them carefully. 

“There,” she said. “Now put on your gloves-” 

Abruptly Nil hooked her waist with one arm and pulled her close, then ran his other hand over her hair. “You’re beautiful,” he declared. “Moments after a vicious fight, and you’re as cool and calm as the morning after a storm. You never cease to steal the breath from my lungs.” 

Aloy burst out laughing even as she felt her ears going red with embarrassed pleasure. His joyful mood was so infectious. “You’re beautiful too,” she replied with a grin. “Even though you’re careless and chaotic.” 

Nil chuckled triumphantly. “Such flattery, Suntress. You know you love it.” He kissed her, finishing the kiss with a lingering nip of her lower lip, then swaggered off along the path. “Now let’s go. Keener’s Rock awaits.”

Keener’s Rock was one of the few settlements in the Cut other than Song’s Edge and Longnotch. Fortunately it was along their route to Stone Yield, as Aloy and Nil needed to stock up on wire and - of all things - blaze. Aloy felt oddly offended by the need to buy blaze; she had always simply collected it from machines, particularly Grazers and Striders, but those two machines didn’t seem to exist here in the Cut. 

They reached the settlement by mid-morning and made their trades, and Nil good-naturedly trailed behind her as she spoke to some of the local Banuk. Despite her growing sense that she and the Banuk would not be seeing eye to eye, Aloy was determined to get to know their ways. Word of her dominance over Aratak had already spread through the Cut, and though the locals still weren’t very talkative, their nods of greeting held a greater respect than before. 

Aloy’s curiosity was captured by an older, powerful-looking man who wore a headdress similar to Aratak’s, and the woman kneeling by his side wearing the characteristic heavy headgear of a shaman. _A different werak’s chief and shamaness. Must be,_ she thought. 

The other chieftain was eyeing her speculatively as well, so Aloy approached him with Nil by her side. “The outlander with flaming hair, who bested a Banuk Chieftain,” he greeted. He didn’t smile, but his half-bow was respectful. 

Aloy nodded politely. “I’m afraid I don’t know of you,” she said.

The chieftain raised his head proudly and gestured to himself and the shamaness. “We are of the White Teeth, come down from the jawbone of Ban-Ur to test those who would run with us.”

Aloy cocked her head. “A test in the Hunting Grounds?”

“No,” the chieftain replied. “It is an ordeal. Survive upon the glacier in the Knifetrail, as our ancestors did. Four days, four nights, sustained only from the frozen ground and the machines.” He pointed to the northeast to indicate the location of the glacier, then turned back to Aloy. “It has been a harsh season. Two have yet to return. We shall wait, then we shall bless their attempt, then we shall leave.”

Aloy frowned suddenly. _Hang on. They’re just going to… leave their people behind?_ “What about the two who haven’t returned?” she demanded.

The chieftain regarded her with mild surprise. “It was their ordeal to face alone, their life or death,” he explained. “Those who return know that the White Teeth run alongside them. Those who do not, know that the White Teeth marked their attempt.” Beside him, the shamaness nodded sagely.

Without meaning to, Aloy took a step closer to the White Teeth chieftain. “Aren’t you even going to _look_ for your missing hunters?” 

Suddenly she felt Nil’s hand at her waist. “Suntress,” he murmured, “it’s their choice. Their challenge to face.” 

She ignored him and stared hard at the White Teeth chieftain, who looked utterly unconcerned by her ire. “We will look in time. As the months pass, the meltwater often carries their bodies out.”

Aloy shook her head in disgust. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. Then, in a louder voice, she said, “If there’s a chance they’re alive, _I’ll_ look for them.” 

Nil’s hand tightened on her waist. “Suntress,” he said warningly. 

Aloy turned towards Nil to placate him, but the White Teeth chieftain spoke before Aloy could. “Even if they did still live, they will not accept your aid, outlander. To us, survival is sacred.” The chieftain continued to gaze at her with a slightly pitying look, and Aloy was further infuriated when the shamaness chimed in. “Nothing else can be relied upon,” she said wisely.

Aloy glared at them, her chin raised high. “We’ll see about that,” she announced, then turned on her heel and marched out of the settlement. 

Aloy was seething with disbelief as she continued east. _No wonder Luka left this place,_ she thought angrily. _They’ve got no respect for the lives of their own people. No empathy, no bending of the rules for a little kindness…_ She was so mired in her own thoughts that it took her a moment to notice that Nil wasn’t by her side.

She stopped and looked back to see Nil following her slowly. She frowned. “What’s the hold-up?” 

His eyes were partly hidden by the shadow of his hood, but as he came to stand in front of her, Aloy realized with a chill that his face was utterly blank. “What are we doing exactly?” he asked.

“We’re…” It was on the tip of Aloy’s tongue to say they were going to find the missing hunters, but suddenly she felt a massive squeeze of guilt. That most definitely was _not_ what they had set out to do this morning. _The bandit camp,_ she thought, with a fresh surge of dismay. No wonder he was displeased. 

She reached a conciliatory hand towards Nil’s arm. “Nil… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t think. This Banuk insistence on survival above everything, it just drives me crazy.” 

Gently she stroked his forearm, but he kept his hands in his pockets as he gazed down at her. “We shouldn’t look for those hunters,” he said. “If they weren’t strong enough to survive their challenge, they’re not strong enough to survive these lands. Besides,” he added quietly, “we have other things to do.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Aloy took a deep breath to calm the frustration rising in her chest. “I know _you_ think that strength is everything,” she said calmly. “But those hunters are just following tribal law. And some laws are _wrong_.” She swallowed hard, thinking of Rost; if he hadn’t died during the Proving, tribal law would have insisted that he leave her behind, that he never speak to her again. Rost had been there in the end, watching her back from afar like always, but this didn’t stop Aloy’s nightmares about Rost walking away from her, his black feathered cape blowing in the breeze like the ashes of defeat.

She folded her arms and gazed up at Nil; his face was as still and cold as a frozen lake. “These hunters deserve a chance,” she insisted. “If _they_ tell me they’re willing to die on some glacier in the middle of nowhere, fine. But if they want to live, they deserve a little help.” 

“Really,” Nil said. “You’ll let them choose their own fate? _You?_ ” 

She recoiled slightly. His voice was calm, but there was a hint of acidity to his mild tone that she hadn’t heard before. Aloy bit her tongue and forced herself not to reply in kind. “Yes,” she said firmly. “If they refuse help, then we’ll leave them. But if they ask for help…” She trailed off as another fist of guilt wrapped around her chest.

As though he’d read her mind, Nil shifted his weight and leaned away from her. “And the bandit camp?” he said, very quietly. 

Aloy swallowed hard and hesitated. Nil had a point. They’d agreed that Stone Yield was the next place they’d go. She’d promised.

But this problem with the missing hunters was time-sensitive…

Finally she took a deep breath. “Those hunters have only one day before the werak leaves Keener’s Rock,” she began. Nil snorted in disbelief and turned away from her, but she grabbed his arm and stood in front of him. She reached up and cupped his face, forcing him to look at her. “We’re headed towards the Knifetrail anyway,” she said softly. “It’s just north of the bandit camp, practically on the way. We’ll just swing up to the trail and check it out. It’ll be quick, I promise.” 

“A promise can shatter like bone under a hammer. Don’t place your weight on it if you don’t mean it,” Nil muttered.

“Hey,” Aloy said sharply, and finally Nil met her gaze. She stared intensely into his gunmetal grey eyes. “I mean it. We’ll check out the glacier trail, ask if they want help, and go if they don’t. Okay?”

Nil was silent for a long time, long enough that Aloy’s heart started to pound anxiously in her throat. But finally he sighed heavily, then flicked a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “All right, fine. Lead the way.”

*****************************

Nil was silent as they rode their Chargers along the path towards the Knifetrail. Aloy remained silent as well, even though she desperately wanted to break the quiet. This icy tension was horribly familiar; it was like the strain that had grown between her and Nil before they’d separated.

This thought alone terrified her, and she was sorely tempted to change her mind, to lead Nil to Stone Yield after all. But the possibility of more lives being senselessly lost because of archaic tribal laws was enough to still her tongue. 

Finally they reached a ledge that looked down into the shallow bowl of a valley, and Aloy spotted a lone Banuk huntress valiantly fighting off a pair of Watchers and a herd of Lancehorns, all laced with the purple ribbons of Daemonic corruption. A zipline led down into the valley and instinctively Aloy reached for it, her nerves screaming to help, but Nil grabbed her shoulder. “No,” he said forcefully. “Let her do it.”

Aloy bit the inside of her lip so hard that she tasted blood, but she’d pushed Nil so far already that she couldn’t afford to alienate him further. She folded her arms, her fingers digging into her own flesh, and watched tensely - and with growing respect - as the Banuk huntress defeated the machines with a clever combination of icebombs and arrows.

When the last Lancehorn hit the ground in a shower of sparks, Aloy turned to Nil. “ _Now_ can we go talk to her?” she demanded. Her voice was sharp, but she was too agitated to soften it.

Nil waved his hand wordlessly to the zipline, and Aloy decided to ignore the faint hint of sarcasm in the gesture. She slid down the rope smoothly and landed in the snow, then hurried over to the Banuk huntress with Nil close behind. 

The huntress stood tall and racked her bow on her back as Aloy and Nil approached. A faint smile pulled up at the corners of her lips, creasing the delicate constellation of freckles on her pale face. “Outlanders, huh?” She shook her head slightly in amusement. “Well, who else would join me on this path I’ve taken?”

“Which path would that be?” Aloy asked. 

“Away from tradition,” the Banuk huntress said, and Aloy immediately perked up with interest. “Away from the werak. It’s not so-”

Suddenly a familiar machine growl interrupted her, and all three of them turned in the direction of the sound: a fresh pack of Daemonic Scrappers was moving in. 

“Damn,” spat the freckled huntress. “They need the metal too, but my need is greater.”

Aloy turned towards her. “I was told the Banuk don’t accept help. Is it true?” she demanded. 

“ _They_ don’t. _I_ do,” the huntress replied boldly, and Aloy felt an instantaneous spark of liking. She turned to look at Nil with raised eyebrows and he shrugged bad-temperedly, but pulled his bow from his back. 

Together Aloy, Nil, and the Banuk huntress took down the Scrappers… and then the cold air was torn anew by the unmistakable and _hated_ sound of a Glinthawk’s cry. 

“Look sharp, outlanders, there’s more of them!” the Banuk huntress cried.

Beside her, Nil growled with disgust. “Glinthawks,” he grunted. “Why is it always Glinthawks?” 

Aloy suddenly grinned at him; even now, in this moment of tripwire-taut tension, it was like he’d read her mind. He grinned back, making her heart skip a hopeful beat, then they threw themselves back into the fray. 

A few long minutes later, the Glinthawks and Scrappers were sparking forlornly on the ground. Nil’s lips were pale with cold - he’d been struck by a few ice pellets - and Aloy silently handed him a bottle of freeze rime extract, then tenderly checked the bandages on his palms once he’d downed the potion. “You’re fine,” she said gently. She looked up at his face, and her heart pounded with relief at the tenderness in his eyes. 

Finally she turned to the Banuk huntress, who was watching them with a faintly wistful expression. The huntress smiled as she approached them. “You fight well, both of you. I am Ikrie.”

Aloy smiled. “Thank you. I’m Aloy, and this is Nil. We heard the White Teeth were missing two hunters.” Aloy propped one fist on her waist as she quickly surveyed Ikrie from head to toe. “You look like you could leave if you wanted to, so…?” 

“I stayed because of the other: Mailen. She snapped her leg descending the ice,” Ikrie explained. “I’ve bided my time keeping vigil, but… now she must return to the werak before they leave.” 

Aloy looked around at the desolate, dangerous valley where they stood. “Is joining the White Teeth this important to you?” she asked. She genuinely couldn’t imagine a single group that she’d needlessly risk her life to join. 

Ikrie shrugged carelessly. “It’s one of the great weraks of Ban-Ur. To be a runner with the White Teeth is everything to Mailen, and I would go where she went. I was her shadow on the snow, and she was mine.” Ikrie’s tone was casual, but her face was sad, and Aloy felt a sudden pang of sympathy.

“You know this Mailen well?” she asked gently. 

Ikrie smiled, and the expression painted her face with such obvious longing that Aloy’s chest hurt. “Since our knees were always skinned,” she replied softly. “All my life. In a test to prove that we only need ourselves…” She sighed. “That was my weakness.”

“Sounds like she was lucky for your ‘weakness’,” Aloy replied sharply. 

“That’s not the way she sees it,” Ikrie muttered, and suddenly Aloy understood. “Mailen won’t let you help her, will she? Because of the rules of this test.”

Ikrie grinned suddenly, but her brown eyes remained sad. “You’re quick as a rockfall,” she said. 

Aloy folded her arms. “No, just used to being told what’s forbidden to me,” she remarked, and Ikrie grinned more widely still, but then shook her head, confirming Aloy’s words. “She won’t allow it. Won’t take the medicinal plants I found, or food; only what she can scrape up on hands and knees. I could get close when she was delirious... but now she’s learned not to let me get close.” 

This last sentence was said with more than a trace of bitterness, and Ikrie didn’t need to spell it out for Aloy to understand that Ikrie meant it in more ways than one. 

Aloy shifted restlessly. “So let’s get her back to the werak,” she said. 

Finally Nil spoke up. “Aloy. Wait,” he said. 

_Aloy._ A chill ran down her back at his use of her real name. She turned to look at him, and sure enough, he didn’t look blank now; he looked genuinely angry. Aloy took a deep breath to try and calm her own spike of anger. “Yes?” she said flatly.

“You promised we would leave if the hunters refused your help,” Nil said. “This Mailen doesn’t want your help, either of you.” He glanced dismissively at Ikrie, then back down at Aloy. “We should go.” 

“ _Ikrie_ is asking for help,” Aloy insisted. “You heard her. Mailen will die if we do nothing!” 

“She chose her path! It’s not your right to decide this other hunter’s fate,” Nil hissed, and Aloy glared back at him despite the sudden jitter of anxiety in her chest. She was frankly shocked that he was fighting her so hard about this. “It’s not your right either,” she retorted. “Maybe we can talk sense into her. Mailen doesn’t know us. We’re unbiased. She deserves a chance to live!” 

“She only deserves a chance if she’s strong enough to grasp it for herself,” Nil snapped, and again Aloy bit her lip. She always tried to respect Nil’s beliefs even if she disagreed with them, but in this moment with Ikrie’s longing face and Rost’s retreating back in the forefront of her mind, it was so damn _hard_.

She stared angrily at the tense muscles in his clenched jaw, then turned back to Ikrie. “Well?” she snapped. “Show us where Mailen is.” Behind her, Nil huffed with disgust. 

Ikrie was watching them cautiously, her eyes darting between them like a trapped fox, but finally she nodded. “All right,” she said quietly. “I’ve made a splint for her leg, medicine for the pain, but I should warn you, she won’t take them willingly. The law of survival-”

“Tribal law shouldn’t keep us apart from the ones we care for,” Aloy interrupted angrily. The sight of Rost’s black feathered cape leaving her behind wavered in her memory. 

Ikrie gazed back at her sadly. “Even if she cares more for the law?” she said softly. Then, without waiting for an answer, she started off towards a sheer cliff face pocked with handholds that led up to a higher elevation.

Aloy followed Ikrie in a brisk jog without looking at Nil. But as she reached for the first handhold on the rock face, Nil took her arm. “Suntress-”

Angrily she jerked her arm from his grip, then immediately regretted it as he took a step away from her. Slowly she turned to face him. “Nil, this law of survival is wrong. It’s wasteful and it’s _wrong._ Forcing these hunters to abide by it just so they can belong…” She swallowed hard. “Forcing people to live by this one rule is too simple. It’s too crude.”

For a long moment Nil was still, his face and his beautiful silver eyes utterly blank. “Is that what you think of me?” he asked.

His voice was perfectly bland, and couldn’t convey his hurt more clearly. Aloy gaped at him in horror. “ _No!_ Of course not! That’s not- I didn’t say that!” 

He tilted his head slightly and continued to stare blankly at her, and suddenly her throat was blocked by a lump of distress as she realized what her words sounded like. She took a desperate step towards him. “Nil, I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about this law, about making people follow it blindly. It’s different-” 

He suddenly slid his hand around the back of her head and gripped her hair gently. “You promised that we would move on,” he said quietly. “You _promised_.” Then he released her and vaulted up the handholds. 

Aloy stood stock-still for a moment, trembling from something worse than cold. Then she followed him up the sheer cliff wall.

She soon caught up to Nil and Ikrie, and together they climbed higher still until they were overlooking a ledge into a flat, snow-covered plain. In the middle of the plain was a small cave formed from the ice, and a slim figure was slumped against the wall of the cave, oblivious to the three Daemonic Longlegs stalking the perimeter.

Aloy crouched between Ikrie and Nil as they watched the Longlegs’ circling paths. “She’s passed out again,” Ikrie said matter-of-factly, but her eyebrows were contracted with distress.

“Between the three of us, we can fight off the machines before they reach her,” Aloy reassured her, and Ikrie gave her a rueful half-smile. “Another tradition broken,” she quipped.

Aloy rose to her feet, and Nil and Ikrie followed her lead. “Take it from me, it gets easier the more you do it,” she deadpanned, and Ikrie’s half-smile grew into a full warm grin. 

Nil jumped down into the snowy plain without a word to Aloy or Ikrie, and again Aloy felt a deeply unwelcome squeeze of distress in her throat, but there was no time to fix it now; Nil was already crouched in in a patch of tall grass, a tearblast arrow knocked in his bow, and as Aloy and Ikrie hopped into the plain to join him, he swiftly shot three tearblast arrows one after the other into each Longlegs’ air bladder. 

Aloy and Ikrie wasted no time following up with precision arrows and ice bombs, and soon the Longlegs were dead on the ground, only to be followed by a Daemonic Scorcher. 

“Damn,” Aloy cursed. Then her jaw dropped as Nil ran full tilt at the Scorcher, his face drawn in a snarl of rage. She watched helplessly as he slid into a smooth skid, narrowly avoiding a spurt of flame from the Scorcher’s muzzle, then leapt onto the Scorcher’s back and slammed his knife into the joint where the Scorcher’s mine launcher was welded to its body. 

The Scorcher whipped around violently, and Nil was thrown from its back… with the mine launcher in his arms. Aloy wasted no time; she tore her ropecaster from her hip and pelted towards the Scorcher, then tied it in place with a handful of strong ropes, leaving Nil free to launch a plethora of mines at the immobilized machine while Ikrie rendered it brittle with icebombs. It was dead in the space of minutes, killed by its own ammo. 

Nil dropped the mine launcher unceremoniously and walked over to stand beside the dead Scorcher, breathing heavily. He lifted his eyes to Aloy’s face, and a sensation of utter hopelessness ripped through her chest at the raw anger and pain in his eyes. 

She opened her mouth - to say what exactly, she wasn’t sure; what were the best words to fix this? - but Nil turned away from her to crouch beside the Scorcher, then began tearing roughly at its innards for parts. 

Aloy ran her fingers through her hair and tugged one braid so hard that it hurt. Then she slowly trudged over to the cave where Ikrie stood looking down at Mailen.

Aloy squeezed Ikrie’s arm gently; the freckled huntress was respecting Mailen’s wishes by staying back, but her fists were clenched with anxiety. Aloy crawled into the cave and started binding the splint Ikrie had made to Mailen’s leg, but she couldn’t help but notice the sickly flush of Mailen’s pale brown cheeks.

Aloy laid her hand gently on Mailen’s forehead; sure enough, she was burning up. “I can feel her fever even in this cold,” Aloy told Ikrie. “She shouldn't have been putting weight on this leg.”

“ _She_ is awake,” a cracked voice suddenly said, and Mailen shoved Aloy’s hand away from her face. She glared up at Ikrie, but even her eyes were burning with fever. “This outlander… You brought her here, Ikrie?”

“You think I went to the Nora homelands to find a spear to drive between us?” Ikrie retorted, and Aloy’s heart clenched again; Ikrie’s voice was rough with pain, mirroring Aloy’s internal landscape much too closely for comfort. 

“I told you, the ordeal is mine and mine alone,” Mailen croaked. “I will survive-” 

Aloy couldn’t take it anymore. _Not another damn word about survival,_ she thought with a surge of rage. _Not another damn, bloody…_ “Which would you rather keep, Mailen?” she snapped. “Your leg or your pride? Because I think you’re going to have to choose.”

Mailen clenched her teeth angrily, forcibly reminding Aloy of Nil’s tense jaw, and Aloy swallowed back another wave of longing and remorse. Finally Mailen jerked her chin at her leg. “Finish it,” she grunted. 

As Aloy finished binding the splint and forced a handful of salvebrush berries into Mailen’s hand, Ikrie spoke in a soft voice. “I know what you think of me. But I vowed that you’d join the White Teeth... and you will.”

Mailen ignored her, and Aloy felt a surge of indignation on Ikrie’s behalf that she had to force herself to quash. _It’s none of my business,_ she thought. _Not my tribe, not my problem…_ But Mailen’s silent resentment grated at her chest like a Ravager’s claws, and Nil’s absence from her side was screaming at her more loudly than the freezing wind. 

Once the splint was tied, Mailen pushed herself shakily to her feet. “I will go back… alone.” She took two limping steps, then fell forward onto her hands. 

Immediately Aloy knelt and took hold of Mailen’s elbow, but Mailen tugged her arm from Aloy’s grip. “No!” she yelled. “Let me do this.”

“Please,” Ikrie whispered. “Let her do it.” Aloy looked at Ikrie; the Banuk huntress’s eyes were shining with tears, but her face was calm. Aloy reluctantly stepped back to stand beside Ikrie, and together they watched as Mailen slowly limped towards the path down the glacier. 

From the corner of her eye, Aloy saw Nil approaching, and her heart began to pound painfully with hope… then with fresh anguish as he stood out of her reach, his arms folded obstinately over his chest. 

“Mailen,” Ikrie suddenly called out. “I hope you can forgive me someday.”

Mailen spun back to face Ikrie, anger twisting her feverish features. “I never accepted your help,” she spat. “It’s the werak you should ask for forgiveness.” She turned away and continued to limp away.

“I didn’t care about the werak,” Ikrie blurted. Aloy’s fingernails bit into her palms; Ikrie’s voice was confident yet broken, trembling with suppressed pain like a shard of ice cracking under the strain of the afternoon sun. A horrible lump of empathy swelled in Aloy’s throat, and she folded her arms defensively. 

Mailen paused briefly at Ikrie’s words… too briefly. Then she continued on her faltering path and was gone. 

The silence was deafening and ugly. Aloy could feel Nil’s disapproval rolling off his skin, as hot and toxic as corruption. She was desperate to say something, _anything_ to smooth away the jagged hostility between them… but instead she turned to Ikrie. “She’ll understand. You saved her life,” Aloy said, but her words sounded hollow even to her own ears.

Ikrie smiled, and the expression was as bittersweet as Scrappersap. “You don’t know the Banuk very well, Aloy,” she said. “We have so many ways to express a grudge… and only one to accept an apology.” Ikrie took a deep breath and raised her chin. “I have to go my own way. I don’t belong with _them_ , who left her to die. And I don’t belong with…” She trailed off and bowed her head. 

A tear slid down Ikrie’s face, and Aloy almost broke as well; Ikrie’s pain was too close to home, echoing both the past and the present, and on impulse Aloy gripped the freckled huntress’s shoulder. “Ikrie…”

Ikrie shook her head roughly. “I’ll find a crack in this glacier, and I’ll shout my grief into it, and the ice can keep it forever,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. When she lifted her face to look at Aloy again, her expression was perfectly calm, and this only broke Aloy’s heart further. 

“What should I tell them? The werak?” Aloy asked gently. 

Ikrie hesitated, then said, “Tell them that I fell... and that she endured. Will you?” 

Aloy nodded, and Ikrie slowly settled onto her knees and started packing up the paltry supplies in the cave. She smiled up at Aloy once more. “Maybe I’ll start a werak of my own... but for now, I’m a werak of one.” 

Aloy couldn’t answer. Her chest was too tight, the ball of pain in her throat too raw to swallow, and Nil’s silent anger was much, much too heavy. 

Then, to Aloy’s surprise, Nil addressed Ikrie. “ _You’re_ the true survivor of this ordeal,” he told her roughly. “Not her. You earned this scar. Wear it with pride.” He didn’t wait for Ikrie’s response; he turned on his heel and headed to the path back down to the base of the Knifetrails. 

Aloy managed to nod to Ikrie, then ran to catch up with Nil. He was already halfway down the nearest ledge. “Nil,” she called out. 

He slowed slightly but didn’t stop, and finally Aloy caught up to him and hooked her hand around his elbow. “Nil-” 

“I _told_ you,” he interrupted. His voice was flat and cold and so damn _angry_. “She didn’t want your help. She didn’t deserve to live, and she knew it. You forced this on her. It’s not your place to decide everything.” 

Aloy stared up at Nil with desperate apology. She knew what he was really saying; he wasn’t talking about Mailen at all. Aloy had failed him again. She’d _promised_ him, promised she’d make space for him in their decisions, and she’d failed. 

A hot tear of shame scalded Aloy’s bruised cheek. “Nil, I’m _sorry_. Let me fix this. I-” 

“Let’s get off this mountain,” he said, then walked away from her.

Silently they made their way to the base of the glacier trail, and Aloy grabbed his hands. “Nil, please. _Talk_ to me. I-”

“I’m going to go demolish the bandit camp,” Nil said. His voice was no longer angry; it was perfectly polite, musical and matter-of-fact, and for a brief instant Aloy wondered if he’d decided to let it all go… then she registered his pronoun.

“You’re going to go… alone?” she asked. She didn’t bother to hide the strain in her voice. 

His nod of confirmation felt like a death sentence. Aloy swallowed hard and clenched her jaw to hold back the howl of misery that was begging to break loose. She had no idea what to say. 

Nil gazed at her placidly. “You have to go back to Keener’s Rock to talk to that chieftain,” he said, and his polite voice was very slightly flat now. “So I’ll meet you in Longnotch in three days.” 

Aloy was aghast. _Three days?_ she thought. It was practically a lifetime. The longest they’d been separated since they’d reunited was one night; Nil had always refused any longer separation. And now he wanted to escape her for three days? _Why?_

Her heart was pounding a screaming denial, and her tongue was already formed into the word _no_. This was the last thing she wanted. But he was gazing down at her now with such a bland lack of expression, and she’d overridden him so many times today already...

There was no choice. 

Painfully Aloy swallowed her refusal, then forced her tongue to move. “Okay. That’s fine,” she lied. “If… if that’s what you want.” 

For an instant his eyes flared with emotion, like water thrown on a spitting fire, and Aloy almost begged him to stay. But then he leaned forward and kissed her briefly - so briefly it only amplified her anxiety rather than alleviating it - then he turned on his heel and strode away to the east.

Dazedly Aloy watched him go. This was like something from a nightmare. If she narrowed her eyes, Nil’s departing silhouette almost seemed to be cloaked with black feathers. 

Nil was walking away from her, and it was all her fault. And for the first time, Aloy wasn’t certain that he would come back.


	8. Survival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put your lips on a pedestal  
> Even if they suck the life out of me  
> Oh I can't stand to be in bed alone  
> ‘Cause I can't dream away happily  
> Wide awake and staring at the door  
> What is fair in love and war?
> 
>  
> 
> [”Ain’t Gonna Leave”, by Arizona](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkGPufaMUfU)

She was so fucking stubborn.

Nil stalked alone towards Stone Yield, his hood pulled low to protect his face from the blowing snow. The white flakes were like razors cutting at his cheeks, but Nil ignored the cold. He could barely feel anything anyway aside from the anger simmering in his gut. 

_Stubborn fire demon. Can’t stop helping people even when they don’t want it,_ he thought. There had been such a good week there, that idyllic period of time when it was just the two of them wandering through the Cut with nobody whining at her for help. It was everything Nil had wanted for so long, and it had been so fucking _good_. He’d been so proud of her for walking away from the incompetent hunters who couldn’t take down their own kills. Nil strongly felt that she deserved the break, some time to breathe away from the miasma of other people’s needs.

Nil was a pragmatic man, and he’d known the peace wouldn’t last; he knew they’d have to return to normal life eventually. But he was genuinely surprised when she’d so casually thrown aside their agreement to go to Stone Yield. 

_And for some fucking hunter who didn’t even want the help, no less,_ he thought. It was a complete waste of time and ammo. And then Suntress had accused _him_ of being wrong… 

Nil reached into his hood and rubbed his hair roughly as an unwelcome rush of hurt seized his throat. Nil knew who he was; he wasn’t particularly introspective. He was a bloodthirsty killer, skilled in the precious gifts of death. And he didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of him… except Suntress. 

She’d always said she saw more in him than just a killer. She’d told him he was more than just a pair of bloodied hands. Nil always laughed and shrugged her off, but now he was realizing that if someone told you something repeatedly over a number of years, you started to believe it. 

And now, to think she saw him as _simple_ and _crude_... 

With effort, Nil swallowed the lump in his throat and continued to stomp his way towards the bandit camp, crushing his heels into the snow as though he could crush the ache behind his sternum. He _hated_ feeling like this. He’d thought he was done with this kind of pain when he and Suntress had reunited. How was it that these old arguments kept resurfacing, like Daemonic memories ghoulishly resurrected by Towers of the ugly past?

The anger and hurt kept circling in his mind like dirty water around a drain. And yet, with every step he took away from her, the dominant part of his mind kept screaming at him to turn back. 

_That_ was what made him the most angry. Even despite Suntress’s stubbornness, trampling their plans as casually as a corrupted Behemoth, all Nil really wanted was to follow her. And he couldn’t do that anymore. 

_Nobody should follow their partner without question._ Vanasha’s grating words rang in his ears, along with Ourea’s accidentally cruel comment about following Suntress unflinchingly. Vanasha and Suntress had both told him he had to stand up for himself in order for their relationship to work, and ever since he and Suntress had reunited, he’d been trying so hard to listen to them.

It went against Nil’s nature to question Suntress, but he thought he’d been doing well at pushing back and speaking up. And it had worked, or so he’d thought; things had been so good between them for months. But now here he was, alone in the snow again, empty and cold without her fire by his side. The work of months had been swept away as quickly as an avalanche, and now Nil was having a hard time reminding himself _why_ he’d been trying so hard not to follow her if it just led to this. 

_Go back._ The insidious, impulsive, _dominant_ part of his mind was hissing at him to go back, follow her, do what she wanted, _be with her_. It was the easier, more natural course of action, and Nil was finding it extremely hard to resist. _Just go back. Just go back. You fucking idiot, just go back-_

Abruptly he veered off the path and climbed onto one of the derelict metal skeletons that his Focus labelled as a car, then sat down before he could turn around and run to Keener’s Rock. His hands shook slightly as he pulled out his Scrappersap flask and took a fortifying gulp. 

He couldn’t go back. If he went back, he’d do whatever Suntress wanted but he’d resent it, and eventually she’d tell him to leave for good like she’d done before.

Besides, he didn’t think he _was_ wrong. Survival was important. Strength was important. The world was built by those who were strong and smart enough to survive it. There was a part of Nil’s mind that was always surprised at how strongly Suntress seemed to disagree with this; after all, she was the strongest and smartest person he knew. 

Nil pulled his gloved fingers through his hair again, and the pain felt good, a welcome distraction from the heavy weight of his heart in his chest. Quietly he sipped his Scrappersap and listened to the desolate wind blowing through the grass and the rusting cars.

 _Just go back. Just go back. Just fucking go back._

He couldn’t go back. He had three days on his own now. He wasn’t sure what exactly had possessed him to propose such a long separation, but somehow he just felt like this was something he needed to do. 

He wasn’t wrong. So maybe he needed to prove it. 

Eventually Nil put away his empty flask and slid down off the car, then continued on his way to Stone Yield. When he finally reached the bandit camp, he was pleased to feel a familiar thrill: this camp was _huge_. Nil carefully and silently scoped out the entire camp; it was so large and sprawling that walking around it took almost an hour. 

By the time he’d counted all the bandits and was ready to make his attack, his blood was singing with anticipation. Usually Nil loved attacking bandit camps with Suntress, watching her lips curl with ferocity as she sent arrows at her enemies, but he hoped now that it would distract him from the anguish that was cutting into his chest like tripwire.

And yet Nil was unable to shake the habits he’d learned from her. He’d used his Focus to count the bandits, and with a pang he imagined Suntress’s combined curiosity and annoyance at the strange scanning technology that some of the bandits wore. He crouched in the grass and quietly picked off sentries as she would usually do, and when he did finally rush headlong into the camp, he did it with more care than usual, methodically attacking the sprawling camp one section at a time until he made it to the most heavily reinforced section where the bandit leader resided with his heavies. 

As Nil crouched in the grass watching the bandit heavies’ clumsy efforts to find him, the ghost of her voice whispered in his ear, asking if he wanted the heavies or the leader. And when Nil silently sniped the bandit heavies one by one before hitting the leader in the face with a tearblast arrow that tore the helmet from his head, he imagined Suntress teasing him about taking such a surprisingly _tidy_ approach. Finally Nil snuck up on the leader and broke his arm, forcing him to drop his strange fire-spitting weapon. Nil carefully sliced the leader’s throat from ear to ear, but the hot spill of red held no joy without her chiding smirk to greet it. 

_You’re so disgusting._ She always managed to imbue those words with so much affection. Nil would do anything to hear those beloved words from her lips right now. 

It wasn’t until a group of Banuk villagers slowly approached him that Nil realized how long he’d just been standing in the decimated bandit camp with his bow in hand. 

“A Carja. Is he one of the bandits?” 

“ _Outlander!_ Drop your weapon!”

Nil slowly raised his face to the suspicious crowd of Banuk, many of whom were pointing their arrows and spears at him. He returned the Voice of Our Teeth to his back. “Stone Yield is yours,” he announced. “But this weapon is mine.” He lifted the Forgefire from the ground, then slowly made his way towards the entrance of the camp. 

Darkness had fallen, and Nil needed to find somewhere to settle for the night. Then he had two more days to prove to himself that he could survive without the one person who brought him to life.

**************

Nil spent the next two days killing every bandit and machine that approached Stone Yield. The former bandit camp was just over half a day’s travel from Longnotch, an easy journey for when it was time to meet Suntress, so Nil had decided to stay put. 

On the first morning, he took out a Daemonic Snapmaw and two Watchers before realizing that a small group of young Banuk hunters was following him from a distance: a group of boys who hardly looked old enough to grow hair on their faces. Nil ignored them; he had nothing to say to them. Besides, he was too busy arguing with the hissing voice in his head that was telling him to run to Keener’s Rock. 

_Just go back. Just go back. By the fucking Sun, go back._

He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t just follow her. He had to survive. 

As the day wore on, the young hunters gradually drew nearer, watching Nil from a closer vantage as he eliminated a pack of Scrappers. Late that afternoon, they finally joined him as he attacked a pair of Tramplers at the nearby rainbow pools. 

One of the boys was knocked down by the Trampler’s ground-blast, and his hand was promptly crushed by the machine’s metal hoof. Nil watched impassively as the young hunter shrieked in pain, then rolled to his feet before stumbling clumsily to his knees again. 

The other young hunters crowded in and started attacking the Trampler’s back and face with little impact. Nil snorted in disgust - _how have any of these infants survived this long?_ \- then shot a single precision arrow at the Trampler’s rightmost excavation horn, blowing the component off. 

The hunters immediately caught on, attacking the Trampler’s other horn with spears and blast bombs until the component flew off in a shower of sparks. Then they stood back slightly, their spears held at the ready, and hesitated.

Nil raised his eyebrows, nonplussed. _What the fuck are they waiting for?_ he wondered. He continued to watch them until the Trampler scraped at the ground and groaned in rage… and still the young hunters waited, some of them glancing briefly at Nil. 

Finally Nil lost his patience and shot a tearblast arrow at the Trampler’s processing unit, and immediately the young hunters followed in kind, attacking the unit with arrows until it exploded and eliminated the Trampler. 

Nil turned back to the Trampler he’d taken down and continued to loot it for parts. Much to his annoyance, the group of young hunters slowly wandered over to him. Nil didn’t acknowledge them; he was too busy pulling wire from the Trampler and ignoring the voice in his head. 

_Just go back. Just go back. You need her like your lungs need air. Just go back-_

“Carja,” one of the young hunters said. “Join us in Stone Yield. We would trade a meal for your instruction.” 

Nil frowned in confusion. _Instruction?_ He hadn’t taught them anything. They’d just been following him around like flies on a rotting corpse. Nil shook his head. 

“Come now, outlander,” one of the other boys said boldly. “It’s not often that a Carja proves a better hunter than a Banuk. Join us.”

Nil slowly turned his head and looked at the group of youth, and was darkly amused when they recoiled slightly at the look on his face. But the bold one spoke again. “Banuk hunters don’t owe debts,” he said. “Let us trade for the knowledge you passed on today.” 

_Flaming fucking Sun,_ Nil thought with ire. These people were almost as stubborn as Suntress. He swallowed a pang of anguish at the thought - _just go back, just go back_ \- then finished looting the Trampler corpse and stood. “Fine,” he grunted bad-temperedly. “I’ll take blaze and meat. That’s all.” 

And so Nil entered Stone Yield and shared a meal with the Banuk settlers, including an obnoxious but oddly amusing child named Opili who proclaimed herself the best bandit leader in the land, and who’d somehow gotten her little hands on the actual bandit leader’s helmet and insisted on wearing it throughout the meal. When he’d finished eating, Nil left Stone Yield and returned to the copse of trees where he’d slept the previous night, bundled in his bedroll in the cover of some rocks.

 _Just go back. Just go back. You’re freezing from the inside out without her. Just go back._ The voice whispered cruelly in his ear all night, and Nil ignored it as best he could.

He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t just follow her. He had to survive. 

On the second day, Nil woke early and went hunting again. The same group of young hunters shadowed him, and finally Nil simply led the hunters towards the machines and stood back, leaving them to hunt until they got desperate and turned to him for help. Late in the afternoon, Opili wandered out of the camp with a child’s bow and refused to leave Nil alone until he showed her how to make hunter’s arrows. Grudgingly Nil ate his evening meal with the Banuk again, traded insults with Opili, then returned to his temporary camp just outside the settlement. 

Tonight the voice didn’t bother him, because he’d be joining Suntress tomorrow.

He’d survived. But somehow the victory was hollow. 

Nil could barely sleep for anticipation. His stomach felt empty despite his meal, his body cold despite his layers and his bedroll. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine the tangled flames of her hair as she pressed her back against him, and the thought comforted him. But Nil was worried. What was he supposed to say to Suntress when he saw her tomorrow?

His anger had all but faded, leaving behind a vague sense of hurt that was all but obscured by the _very_ sharp blade of yearning below his ribs. Nil remembered the reasons he’d been angry, but would he remember tomorrow when she looked up at him with those mercurial green-and-gold eyes? 

On the morning of the third day, Nil woke early and made his way south towards Longnotch. As he passed by the walls of Stone Yield, a high piping voice called out to him. “I didn’t say you could leave!” 

Nil looked up and raised one eyebrow at Opili. The unruly little brat was still wearing that damn bandit leader’s helmet. “I don’t need your permission to leave,” he called. “Bandit leaders don’t get to tell hunters what to do.” 

“I’ll expect a chest full of slagshine glass as tribute if you ever dare to show your face here again!” Opili’s helmet teetered precariously on her head, and she grabbed it clumsily to keep it in place before planting her hips imperiously on her stout little waist.

Nil smirked and made a rude hand gesture at the child, then continued on his way at a brisk jog. If he hurried, he would arrive in Longnotch just past noon. 

_What do I say to her?_ Nil thought as he ran. He wasn’t angry anymore, but maybe he should be. She had gone back on her word, after all. They’d come to an agreement, and she’d broken it. He didn’t want to start another fight with Suntress, but he worried that the same problem would happen again if he didn’t say anything. 

He really didn’t _want_ to say anything at all, though. He didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to clutch the strong curves of her body, feel her lips breathing life into him, see her looking at him like he was more than _simple_ and _crude_... 

Nil was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn’t check his surroundings as he ran south. When a bandit’s arrow narrowly missed his face, shearing a neat hole in his hood, Nil almost laughed at the ridiculously inconvenient timing. Of all the fucking times for a bandit attack… 

But the three Daemonic Bellowbacks and the pair of Scorchers racing after the bandits were no laughing matter.

This was the true meaning of survival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Originally I had an entire sequence of interactions between Nil and Opili in this chapter, but I ended up cutting it because it was way too long (more than 6 pages??) and it detracted too much from the main plot, and Opili is such a minor character that I wasn't sure if people would even know who she is. ([Here's the entire interaction with her, in case any readers didn't encounter her at the bandit camp.](https://pikapeppa.tumblr.com/post/167913990276/opili-the-most-feared-future-bandit-leader-of)) I've released the part that I cut as a oneshot [(which you can read here)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12317361/chapters/29903550), in case anyone wants to see Nil chilling with a bloodthirsty brat. LOL.


	9. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can see the doubt in those eyes  
> Even though you try to hide it  
> There’s not much to figure out  
> ‘Cause I know why, and I won't try to fight it
> 
> And I’ll be the first to tell you, you were right  
> Oh, you were right, oh you were right  
> Won't try to say I'm sorry this time
> 
> But I want you to know that I was wrong  
> I know, I just want to say that I was wrong
> 
> ”I was wrong,” by Arizona

Aloy watched Nil walk away through the heavy fall of snow. The words _come back_ were rising up in her chest, threatening to choke her, but somehow she kept her lips shut. Once his looming silhouette had disappeared into the snowstorm, she whistled for a Charger and made her way to Keener’s Song. 

Aloy bent low over her mount as she raced west towards the settlement. The frigid wind whipped tears from her eyes, but Aloy knew they weren’t all from the cold. Letting Nil leave felt so horrendously _wrong_ that she wanted to scream. But it was what he said he wanted… 

_I have to let him go. For now,_ she thought. If she told this to herself enough times, maybe she’d believe it. Maybe it would stop feeling like she was reliving a horrible, corrupted version of the past. Maybe her mind would stop inserting Rost’s cape onto Nil’s back, conflating ugly scars of the past with this new wound. 

This was her fault. She’d tried so hard to be better for Nil, to give him an equal say, but she’d _failed._ Just like she’d tried so hard to fix GAIA… 

A horrendous bloom of shame and self-disgust burst in Aloy’s chest, and she kicked her Charger with her heels to go even faster, heedless of any machines that might be waiting along the path. If a pack of Stalkers attacked her right now, she’d deserve it. 

By the time she reached Keener’s Rock, her face felt raw from the combination of wind and tears, but Aloy didn’t care. She jumped off her Charger and stalked into the settlement toward the White Teeth chieftain. 

“Mailen has returned,” he announced as she approached. Indeed, Mailen was sitting nearby, her leg wrapped in a more secure splint and her face infuriatingly composed. Aloy swallowed back a bolt of rage as the chieftain continued. “I expect you have something to say about this?”

“I do,” Aloy said. She ignored the half-warning, half-pleading look that Mailen threw her. 

The chieftain folded his arms. “Then convince me what an outlander’s word is worth.”

Aloy stared hard at him. “I’m not up on all the Banuk traditions… but I do know that what matters to you is that your laws are upheld.” She paused and took a deep breath to calm her rage. This was _so_ much like being back in the Sacred Lands. “Going by the rules of your… _ordeal_ , Mailen endured the four days and the four nights. She faced the extremes and survived. Seems to me that’s what you wanted.” Aloy kept her voice perfectly bland as she said this; Nil would have been proud of her.

The chieftain gazed at her with obvious approval. “Just so.” Then he tilted his head. “You saw nothing of the other hunter? The one called Ikrie?” 

A fresh pang of empathy-laced pain coursed through Aloy at the thought of Ikrie. Ikrie, who’d also stood back and watched someone she loved walk away because it was what that person wanted...

Aloy took a deep breath. “She’s… gone. She sounded brave.”

“Her name will always be in my song,” Mailen suddenly said, and Aloy glanced at her. For the first time, Mailen looked sad. 

A bolt of anger pierced Aloy’s anguish. What right did Mailen have to be sad, when she was the one who’d thrown Ikrie aside like rusted scrap? 

Aloy nodded a terse goodbye to the chieftain and shamaness, then walked over to Mailen’s side. “You’re very clever,” Mailen said flatly. “You learned our laws well enough to break them, and to defend another’s honour too.” 

Aloy folded her arms and stared at Mailen. She felt too raw to bother hiding her disapproval. “I know how much those laws mean to you. Though I don’t understand why,” she said flatly.

“Don’t you see?” Mailen said angrily. “Ikrie was my only friend, and she could have died. You could have too, all for my mistake.” Mailen took a deep breath through her nose, then firmly said, “The law of survival would not allow such a waste. It makes us strong and cold. It challenges us to leave friendship behind.” 

“I grew up with laws like that. They brought me nothing but pain,” Aloy snapped. Mailen’s words were a variation on the theme that Nil had been espousing since they’d gotten here, and suddenly Aloy couldn’t help but wonder if this was part of the reason Nil had left her. He believed in strength above everything. Was he leaving her behind because he thought their relationship weakened him?

Mailen raised her eyebrows knowingly, unaware of the throbbing anguish in Aloy’s chest. “Did you believe in those laws?” 

Aloy shifted restlessly and glared at Mailen, who huffed. “That’s what I thought,” Mailen said. “This is my choice. _My_ pain. The White Teeth are my future now.” She raised her chin, and her expression was cold and stern and consummately _Banuk_. “I’m grateful to you, but we have nothing more to speak of.”

Aloy didn’t bother to say goodbye. She turned on her heel and stalked out of the settlement, then vaulted onto her Charger and sped back in the direction of Song’s Edge. At this moment, she was sick of this place, sick of the Banuk and their cold indifference, and just absolutely _heartsick_. She desperately wanted a friendly face. 

***************

“Aloy! Mourn my poor departed luck. I finally found some Banuk willing to trade with outlanders, then they up and vanish!” 

For the first time in what felt like ages, Aloy smiled. She planted one hand on her hip and cocked her head at Burgrend. “All right, Burgrend. Tell me what happened.” 

“Three Banuk hunters rolled up in here a few days ago,” Burgrend said. “No provisions, junk equipment, no idea how to strip a machine for parts. Asked me to outfit them for a long journey. And you know me, Aloy, I’m sentimental. So I did it on credit.”

Aloy raised her eyebrows skeptically at the long-suffering look on Burgrend’s face. “Uh-huh. And they haven’t paid?”

Burgrend sighed and stood back, allowing Aloy to see the dilapidated machine part on his workbench. “They tried. Just look what they did to this Thunderjaw heart! But that was ages ago, and I’m starting to worry about them.”

Aloy eyed the ruined Thunderjaw heart with revulsion. It was barely useable. “What do you mean, they couldn’t harvest parts?”

“Not uncommon with Banuk,” Burgrend explained. “That’s shaman’s work, you see. The hunters take down the machines, the shamans slice them up.”

Aloy stared at him, and a spark of understanding suddenly lit her mind. _That explains so much,_ she thought, remembering the first time she and Nil had watched that group of hunters leaving an entire pack of Charger corpses to rust in the snow. She turned her head excitedly to point this out to Nil… then belatedly remembered he wasn’t there. 

A needle-sharp pinch of misery stabbed her in the throat, and she forced herself to ignore it as she turned back to Burgrend’s benign, canny face. “Tell me, Burgrend, are you worried about their wellbeing or your purse-strings?”

“A man can worry about two things!” Burgrend exclaimed innocently. 

Aloy raised her eyebrows skeptically. “I’m not a debt collector, Burgrend. If I look for them, it’ll be to make sure they’re all right.” 

“Of course, of course! Fire of the forge forgive me, I actually like these idiots. The molten steel of youth and all that…” He shifted his weight slightly and offered her a winning smile. “But if you _do_ manage to find them, you could remind them of the deal we made. A Scorcher claw, a loop of sinew from a Stalker, and a Snapmaw fang. If they bring me those parts, their debt is paid and then some. Just… make sure they don’t bust the parts up too badly.”

Aloy rolled her eyes, then waved Burgrend a brief goodbye and jogged off to her Charger. But she wasn’t really annoyed. Rather, she was grateful. Having a concrete goal to focus on, doing something she was good at… 

This was just what she needed: a good distraction. Then maybe she could stop imagining Nil’s departing back, hidden by the bone-white snowstorm like a flag of surrender. 

*********************

That afternoon, Aloy spotted her quarry: three ragtag Banuk hunters not-so-quietly arguing near a control Tower that was patrolled by a plethora of Daemonic machines. 

Slowly Aloy approached from the side so the hunters could see her coming. “I don’t suppose you three know an Oseram in Song’s Edge called Burgrend, do you?”

One of the hunters - a woman around Aloy’s age - turned and smirked condescendingly at her. “Boys! That con artist sent an errand girl to collect what’s owed to him.” 

_Ah, classic Banuk hospitality,_ Aloy thought acerbically. “I’m no errand girl. Burgrend asked me to help harvest parts. Or would you rather keep trying to sell him broken junk?” She planted one fist on her hip and raised her eyebrows at the little group. 

The younger of the two men drew back as though he’d been slapped. “Broken junk?” he protested. 

The older man held out a placating hand to his friends, and his voice was as calm as his manner. “This pack will be on the move soon. No time to argue. If she’s offering help, we should accept it.” 

The snarky huntress gave Aloy another skeptical once-over, then folded her arms. “Fine. We’re about to take on these machines. If you’re so eager to help, lead the way!”

Aloy smiled sarcastically, then slid into the nearest patch of grass. Aloy was even quieter than usual in her silent hunter gear, and she overrode the Tower without difficulty, then stealth-attacked the Daemonic watchers one by one before starting in on the Longlegs. 

Some time later, after Aloy and the little group of hunters had demolished the remaining Longlegs and a Scorcher, Aloy slid her spear onto her back and strolled back over to the hunters. She couldn’t help the little Nil-like swagger in her step. _I might be a failure as a wife, but at least I can still hunt,_ she thought.

She swallowed her bitterness before facing the three hunters. “Well, that’s done. You three are pretty handy in a fight.”

The huntress, Tatai, folded her arms again, but her stare was a hint less insolent than before. “Thanks, I guess. Not that we needed your help. We were doing just fine without you.”

Aloy smirked knowingly. “That’s not the way Burgrend tells it. He says you tried to settle up with him using a shattered Thunderjaw heart.” 

“What?” squawked the young man. “That’s an exaggeration! It was only broken in two!” Aloy almost snickered; it was obvious now who had broken the Thunderjaw heart.

“Urkai, we don’t have time for this,” Tatai hissed. “Come on, boys, back to the hunt. We still need two more of Burgrend’s components before we get out of here.”

Aloy tilted her head curiously. Burgrend had mentioned these three wanting to be outfitted for a long journey. “Why are you leaving the Cut?”

Urkai pursed his lips. “Well, we _could_ go back to Ban-Ur. Let Onnekut slit our throats…”

Tatai glared at Urkai, her face painted with pained exasperation. “By the Blue Light, Urkai, why don’t you just write our story in the snow for any passing hunter to read?” She sighed sharply, then turned back to Aloy. “We had a dispute with the chieftain of our old werak. We thought someone else should have been in charge. He disagreed.” 

The older man, Tulemak, added, “It seemed like a good time to move on. So we’re travelling to the Sundom.”

Aloy raised her eyebrows. “From here to the Sundom? That’s a long trip.” 

“Seems worth it,” Tulemak replied. He smiled sadly at Aloy. There was something gentle and sad in Tulemak’s face that reminded her affectionately of Avad. “Sometimes survival is about knowing when to leave and where to go.”

“Yeah,” Urkai interjected. “And in this case, survival is about getting as far away as we can from Ban-Ur. We’ve seen enough red snow.” 

_Interesting,_ Aloy thought. Already these three were different from the other Banuk she’d met, for whom survival and sheer physical strength seemed to be synonymous. 

Aloy held out a machine part to Tatai. “Here’s the Scorcher claw Burgrend was asking for. That only leaves the Stalker sinew and the Snapmaw fang.” 

Gently Tulemak curled Aloy’s fingers back over the part. “You should hold onto it,” he said. “You’re coming along for the next hunt, after all, aren’t you?”

Aloy was embarrassed to feel a sudden pang of bittersweet gratefulness. These hunters actually wanted her to join them. _At least someone wants me around,_ she thought with a humiliating surge of self-pity. Well, two of them did: Tulemak’s open face was full of welcome, and Urkai was gazing at her expectantly, but Tatai’s arms were folded, her lips pursed thinly. 

Finally Aloy shrugged casually. “I suppose somebody’s got to keep you three out of trouble.”

Tatai sighed loudly. “Fine. I guess you’ll have to tag along then. But don’t start thinking you’re one of us,” she added warningly, then lifted her chin proudly. “The Bloody Snowdrifts aren’t accepting new hunters.”

Aloy frowned suddenly. _The what now?_ she thought. Urkai seemed to share her thoughts; he snorted loudly. “The Bloody Snowdrifts? _That’s_ what you want to call our werak?”

Tulemak shifted awkwardly. “Yeah, it’s… not great, Tatai.” 

Tatai scowled. “It’s not like your names are any better!” Then she frowned at Aloy. “You. We’re headed northwest, to the ruins near the Hollow Hall. You coming or what?” Without another word, she turned on her heel and started to march away. 

Aloy watched Tatai’s departing back thoughtfully. Tatai wasn’t any friendlier than Mailen, but Aloy could tell that her hard defensiveness was masking something deeper. 

Tulemak rested a gentle hand on Aloy’s shoulder, pulling her from her thoughts. “What’s your name, huntress?”

Aloy smiled. “I’m Aloy.” 

Tulemak smiled gently. “Thank you for your help, Aloy. Shall we go?” He gave her an encouraging nod as he started to walk away. 

“Yeah, come on, Aloy, no time to waste!” Urkai called as he jogged off in Tatai’s wake. “I need a lot more kills to add to my song!” 

Aloy shook her head in amusement, then started after them. There was definitely a story here with these three. At least Aloy could make the best of a terrible situation by doing what she loved best: hunting machines and sating her curiosity. 

**************************

Late that evening, after Aloy had overridden another control Tower and she and the three hunters had torn apart the Daemonic Stalkers and Scrappers surrounding the Tower, Aloy held up the Stalker sinew in triumph. “That’s another part down. One more and you’ll have what you need to pay off Burgrend.”

Urkai heaved a satisfied sigh.“It’s starting to feel real, you know? Starting to really believe we’re gonna get out of here. Honestly, I wasn’t sure we’d survive a week without Nukoni. But here we are.” 

Aloy tilted her head; another piece of the story was coming out. “Who’s Nukoni?”

Urkai immediately sobered. “Nukoni… Nukoni was a friend of ours. She challenged the Chieftain for control of the werak.” 

“She didn’t make it,” Tulemak said gently.

“No,” Tatai suddenly interjected. Her voice was sharp, but her face was drawn with pain. “If you’re going to tell this story, tell it true.” She turned to Aloy. “Nukoni was murdered.” 

Aloy’s eyebrows contracted in sympathy. “What happened? How did you lose Nukoni?”

Urkai took a deep breath. “The chieftain, Onnekut? He wrapped himself in power and authority the way some people wrap themselves in furs. If you were willing to fawn over him and sing false songs to him, you might get a spot on the best hunts.” Urkai shifted angrily, then continued, “Nukoni challenged him to a hunting competition. Onnekut - damn him! - he wasn’t nearly the hunter Nukoni was. But who comes back to the camp after the trial? Onnekut, grinning like a Snapmaw, crowing ‘oh, where’s little Nukoni?’” 

“We tracked Nukoni through the woods,” Tulemak added quietly. “Found her not far from the trailhead.”

A chill ran down Aloy’s back at his ominous tone, but Urkai confirmed her suspicions in his blunt way. “Her damn neck snapped,” he grunted.

“I don't want to remember her like that,” Tatai burst out, and Aloy’s chest swelled with empathy; Tatai’s voice was cracked with anguish. “But sometimes that memory… It’s all I can think of.”

“I’m sorry, Tatai,” Aloy said quietly. “It sounds like she meant a lot to you.” She looked at Tulemak and Urkai. “To all of you.” Tatai nodded tightly, unable to meet Aloy’s eyes, so Aloy switched to a more businesslike tone. “This is why you left Ban-Ur? Because of this business with Nukoni and your chieftain?” 

Tulemak nodded. “Onnekut knew Nukoni was our mentor… our friend. We couldn’t stay.” 

“That final night, we snuck back to camp, packed what we could, and left,” Urkai explained. 

“Like cowards,” Tatai muttered resentfully. 

Urkai spun on her. “What are we, Tatai? We’re Banuk, aren’t we? Survive and prevail. That’s what we do!” 

“It’s not what _she_ did,” Tatai retorted, and immediately Aloy could tell this was an argument the hunters had had before. “I’m… sorry for what you’ve been through,” she said quietly.

Tulemak gave a tiny, sad smile. “Thank you, Aloy. It’s nice to be heard.”

Urkai shrugged, but his face was downcast. “Look… it doesn’t matter, okay? What happened in Ban-Ur is buried in Ban-Ur. What matters now is what happens in the Sundom. That’s where the Burning Turkeys are gonna make a name for themselves, right?”

Despite the somber mood, Aloy grinned, and Tatai groaned loudly. “Ugh, the Burning Turkeys? _Seriously?_ ”

“It rolls off the tongue,” Tulemak reasoned, but Tatai threw him a deeply skeptical look. “Sort of like vomit?” she retorted acidly.

Aloy rubbed her mouth with her hand to hide her smile. “Where to next?”

“There’s a lake just west of here,” Urkai replied. “Seems like a good place to find a Snapmaw fang. We’ll meet you there.”

Tatai’s arms were folded defensively again, and Aloy got the distinct sense that they wanted to talk without her, so she nodded agreement and jogged away. But as she left, she heard Urkai’s voice drifting through the late-evening air. 

“Maybe Tatai’s right. Maybe we should have stayed and fought.”

Suddenly Aloy couldn’t help but wonder the same thing about her and Nil. The day’s distractions abruptly faded in the quiet of night, and a heavy wave of loneliness washed over her, colder and more cloying than the frozen lake she was headed towards. Nil’s absence was like a dark void drawing her attention more surely than a dead body in the snow, and suddenly Aloy wanted to slap herself for her mistake. _I should have asked him to stay… fought to make things right. Maybe I shouldn’t have just let him go._ After all, how was this any different from when she’d let him walk away before?

Confusion and pain roiled in her stomach, making her feel nauseous, so Aloy sped up and ran more swiftly through the pine trees towards the lake. _He wanted this,_ she reminded herself. Nil was the one who’d said he wanted time alone. That was how this was different. 

This time, Nil was the one throwing _her_ aside like a looted corpse.

Suddenly Aloy was hopelessly awash with anger and self-pity. Here she was, alone again, abandoned _again_ by choice by someone who claimed to love her. Her throat was throbbing with the unfairness of it. Part of Aloy’s mind knew that she was being childishly self-indulgent, but it was so hard to stay logical with this howling pit in her chest. 

Nil had walked away. She’d wanted to talk, to fix her mistake, and he’d left her, just like Rost. 

Just like Rost.

Aloy waited by the frozen lake for a long time, huddled in the warmth of her chieftain’s fur cape but frozen from within by the blackness of her thoughts. Anger, self-disgust, and sheer self-pitying misery rolled through her mind like tumbleweeds until Aloy wasn’t sure anymore which emotion was the correct one for the situation. 

Finally she heard the crunching footsteps of several humans, and she cautiously took hold of her spear until Tulemak’s gentle voice called out a greeting. “I was starting to worry about you three,” Aloy said, then subtly cleared her throat; her voice sounded rough and awkward with the tears she’d been choking back. “Everything all right?”

“We took our time,” Tulemak explained. “After our last conversation, we had a lot to think about.”

Aloy nodded acknowledgement. “Just one more hunt. Then your debt is paid and you can make your way south.” She took off the heavy fur cape - she preferred to have her arms unobstructed during the hunt - then rose to her feet. “Ready?”

Tulemak bowed slightly. “Huntress, the Sunshine Snowshoes await your signal.” 

_Sunshine Snowshoes…?_ A sudden laugh burst from Aloy’s throat, and she could hear the barely-hidden sorrow hidden beneath the mask of mirth, but fortunately the others were too busy laughing as well to notice. “Horrible!” Urkai choked. 

“I’m almost impressed, Tulemak! Didn’t think you could come up with a name worse than Burning Turkeys!” Tatai grinned and elbowed the older hunter. 

Tulemak smiled and shrugged affably. “Well, I liked it. Let’s hunt!”

The frozen lake was either a hunter’s paradise or nightmare, depending on one’s opinion. Three control Towers had sprouted along the edges of the lake, and the entire area was crawling with Snapmaws, Longlegs and Scrappers, almost more than her Focus could tag at once. Frankly, Aloy was delighted. This was exactly what she needed to get her blood pumping and to shove the heartache out of her chest. 

By the time they’d felled the machines and collected the Snapmaw fang, dawn had broken, illuminating the ice with stripes of pink and orange. Aloy placed the fang in Urkai’s hand with satisfaction. “There. That’s the last of Burgrend’s parts.” 

“For now,” Tatai remarked. “Until Urkai breaks something else.”

“It was one time!” Urkai whined, and Aloy snorted a laugh before tilting her head fondly at the little group. “Once you get to the Sundom, what’s next?”

Tatai raised her chin proudly. “We hunt like Nukoni wanted to hunt.”

Tulemak nodded agreement. “Nukoni had big dreams: a werak in which everyone pulls their weight and takes care of each other. No shamans, no chieftains… no need to pry the power out of anyone’s hands.” He looked at Urkai and Tatai, who nodded somberly. “It will be a fitting tribute to Nukoni. We can become the werak she always wished for.” 

“I think you already are,” Aloy said firmly. And it was true: as much as these three bickered and fought, they worked as a team. She’d witnessed them setting up kills for each other, protecting each other’s backs during the hunt, and equitably discussing their plans for what to do in the Sundom. They argued, sure, but they always seemed to come to a resolution somehow. 

Aloy folded her arms as a fresh feeling of failure washed over her. If these three could do it, why couldn’t she and Nil? 

Aloy sniffed hard, then lifted her chin and smiled determinedly. “So. How does it feel, putting Banuk lands behind you?”

“The only thing I would have missed is already gone,” Tatai said softly, and Aloy bit the inside of her cheek. _I know how that feels,_ she thought. And it wasn’t only Nil she thought of now; Rost’s memory, his grave at their lonely cabin over Mother's Heart, was the only part of the Sacred Lands that Aloy considered truly precious.

“It’s strange,” Tulemak said musingly. “What is it to be Banuk after Ban-Ur forsakes you? How do we decide who we are?” He looked at Urkai, who shrugged in a would-be casual way, then at Tatai, whose face was melancholy. Finally he looked at Aloy. “Who do _you_ think we are, Aloy? What will you remember of us?”

Aloy was quiet for a moment. “You lost someone you care about,” she said finally. “That leaves a wound… the sort of wound a lot of people don’t recover from.”

“Yeah, and we’ve got nothing but scars to show for it,” Tatai said bitterly. 

Aloy looked at her sharply. “That’s the point. Only survivors scar. After everything you’ve been through, you keep going.”

She paused and took a deep, painful breath as she realized whose words she was parroting. Nil had said something very similar to Ikrie just yesterday.

He’d said the same thing to Aloy when they’d barely known each other, when he’d first smoothed his fingers over the scar on her neck left by Helis. _Isn’t this a thing to savour, if it’s a trial you’ve overcome?_

Nil was the one who had first shown Aloy that scars - both physical and emotional - were the bridge between surviving and living. Whether Nil knew it or not - and knowing him, he’d probably deny it - his concept of strength had never just been physical. But somehow during this trip, embroiled as Aloy was in her feelings of being an outcast and out-of-place, Aloy had forgotten that. 

Nil had been right. She _had_ treated him like he was simple and crude.

Tulemak’s voice pulled her from the agonizing guilt of her roiling thoughts. “We’re… the Scars of the North.”

Aloy looked up at them; Urkai and Tatai were looking at Tulemak, who looked utterly at peace. 

Urkai nodded thoughtfully. “Scars of the North. Sounds pretty tough, doesn’t it?” He smiled at Tatai, and for the first time since Aloy had met her, Tatai smiled back. A half-smile tinted with irony, but a smile nonetheless. 

Tulemak gave Aloy a little half-bow. “Thank you, Aloy. It’s a good name. One we’ll honour.” 

Aloy nodded farewell and turned to leave, but Tatai’s voice stopped her. “Maybe we’ll see you in the Sundom. You could hunt with us. If you want.” 

Aloy turned back to Tatai; her arms were folded, but the warmth in her eyes was genuine. Aloy grinned. “Thanks, Tatai. Safe travels.” 

Aloy trudged away and silently slid into the nearby forest to find a Charger. She figured she would bring Burgrend his parts, then head straight to Longnotch to wait for Nil. Burgrend had mentioned that his daughter-slash-business partner worked out of Longnotch, and Aloy was curious to meet her. 

And maybe Nil would show up to Longnotch early, like her. 

She heaved a tremulous sigh as she stealthily overrode a Charger, then hopped on its back. In the wake of her conversation with the Scars of the North, her anger and self-pity had dissolved, leaving only sorrow and guilt in their place. Aloy’s sense of logic had finally muscled its way back to the fore, reminding her that Rost and Nil may be similar, but not because they’d both abandoned her. Rost had always been there, after all, watching her from afar during the Proving. He’d always had her back, just like Nil. And the only reason Nil wasn’t here now was because of her mistakes.

Aloy took a deep breath and kicked her Charger’s sides. _Only survivors scar,_ she reminded herself. She could only hope that Nil would give her a chance to heal this wound.


	10. Wait

Aloy arrived in Longnotch late that evening, and was surprised to be immediately hailed by a familiar and _very_ hearty Oseram voice. “Aloy! Hah! The woman of the hour!” 

Aloy hopped off of her Charger and wandered over to Gildun’s side. “Gildun! It’s good to see you. Strange, since you’re not stuck in a ruin somewhere, but good…” She smirked.

Gildun chortled. “Ho ho, listen to her! Circumstances being what they are, one might expect a blunter tongue, but not her!” He rocked back on his heels and gazed at her with proudly. “Rumours abound in Song’s Edge. A campaign to exorcise some sort of Daemon, led by a Nora girl who became Chieftain of a Banuk werak? Would’ve sounded like nonsense before I met you!” Then he waved his hand vaguely, looking uncharacteristically shy. “So I came, I suppose... I’m not sure what I have to offer you, but…”

Aloy patted his arm affectionately. “I understand, Gildun. Thanks for coming to see me off. But I’ll be around for a couple of days. I’m waiting for… waiting for Nil.” Somehow she managed to sound casual while saying it. 

“Nil, the Carja songbird!” Gildun exclaimed. “Where is that harmonic husband of yours, Aloy? The two of you were like steel links in a chain. I’m surprised he could sunder himself from your side.” He chuckled good-naturedly, oblivious to the fresh distress squeezing Aloy’s lungs.

She forced her face to remain pleasantly neutral. “He went off to Stone Yield. I had some errands to run. We… It was more efficient this way.” 

Gildun raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. “Well, colour me surprised is all. But it’s good to have you here. Fill me in on your adventures! I’ve been hoping for an exciting tale. None so far have rivalled our adventures in the Greycatch!” 

Aloy smiled gratefully as Gildun gallantly gestured for her to precede him to the campfire to share a meal. Oseram friends could always be counted on for a happy distraction.

*******************

The next morning, Aloy spoke briefly with Aratak, who agreed to wait for two days until Nil arrived. Aloy then spent her time chatting with Gildun and discussing weaponcraft with Burgrend’s daughter Varga. Varga’s enthusiasm for and facility with weapons was incredibly impressive, reminding Aloy forcibly of a younger Petra. Varga enhanced Aloy’s Stormslinger with a spare Stormbird claw that Aloy had in one of her pouches and told Aloy wistfully about a weapon she’d designed and built herself, but had unwittingly sold to the bandit leader Ohlgrud. Aloy felt a pang of longing as she wondered whether Nil might bring the weapon to Longnotch with him, but then Varga asked her about the armaments on a Deathbringer, and Aloy latched onto the topic with relief.

Ultimately, Aloy was relieved she’d come to Longnotch early; what with Gildun’s incessant friendly chatter and Varga’s encyclopedic knowledge of weaponcraft, Aloy’s mind was kept thoroughly occupied while she waited for the day that Nil would arrive. 

On the day of Nil’s anticipated arrival, Aloy woke earlier than usual after an almost sleepless night. She crafted arrows in the dark until the lightening of the sky indicated a reasonable time of day to be awake. She managed to force down a few dried figs and some toast with Gildun and Varga, and then she waited. 

_He probably won’t get here until noon,_ Aloy told herself. Wherever he was coming from, she couldn’t expect him to get here this early; besides, he’d be travelling on foot without Aloy to override a Charger for him. But the poisonous little flower of longing in her chest kept whispering that maybe he’d show up any second. Maybe he’d been travelling all night to meet her because he missed her as much as she missed him. After all, Nil had been known to run across vast distances to be with her… 

He could be here any minute. It was possible. 

By midday, Aloy had started crafting ammo compulsively. Gildun teased her, asking if she was getting ready to outfit an army, and Aloy somehow managed to answer normally; she wasn’t sure what she said exactly, but Gildun laughed and wandered away, so she must have successfully masked her growing agitation. 

By late afternoon, Nil still hadn’t arrived, and Aloy’s fingers were raw from attaching arrowheads to shafts, so she moved on to making blast bombs. She’d begun tapping her Focus every minute or two to check if he was within range, with no success. 

That night, Nil still hadn’t arrived. Gildun sat beside Aloy and offered her an Oseram flask filled with tea. When Aloy didn’t take the tea immediately, Gildun gently reached over and removed the half-crafted bomb from her hands. “Take a break, Aloy. By the forge, you’re spitting out more bombs than a canon!” 

Aloy allowed Gildun to place the tea in her hands, and automatically she lifted the flask to her mouth and took a sip. When the hot tea scalded her tongue, she welcomed the pain. It detracted slightly from the excruciating ache behind her sternum. 

She and Gildun sat in silence for a moment, and Aloy shifted uncomfortably; she knew Gildun well enough now to know that this kind of silence was very unusual for him. Finally he spoke. “So when is Nil supposed to arrive?”

“I don’t know,” Aloy said sharply. She was too agitated now to try and act normally. She took another painful sip of the tea and said nothing more. 

After another brief silence, Gildun spoke again. “Aloy… did something happen?”

Aloy bit the inside of her cheek hard. It had taken her a long time to get comfortable talking about personal problems with Erend and Vanasha, and Gildun was still practically a stranger. And yet, he was so kind, and his big blue eyes were so much like Erend’s… 

“We… had an argument,” she finally admitted. “He wanted some time alone. He said he’d meet me here in three days.” Her eyes burned with sudden tears, and she raised her face to the sky in a pretense of looking at some clouds as she tried to force them back.

Gildun reached out and squeezed her hand, and to Aloy’s embarrassment, a tear ran down her face at his kind touch. “He’ll come, girl. I know he will.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Aloy snapped angrily, but Gildun only squeezed her fingers again. Aloy roughly wiped her face and sighed. “You don’t know him, Gildun,” she said quietly. “Nil doesn’t get angry easily. But when he does… there’s a good reason for it.” 

“I might not know that man of yours very well… but Aloy, I’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not know how much he adores you,” Gildun said gently. “He was like a shadow at your heels during our delve!”

“That’s the problem,” Aloy muttered. Gildun frowned in confusion, and Aloy shook her head; she wasn’t about to get into the details of the past with him. Instead, she said, “He’s been mad before. I… we’ve argued before. But he never _left_ before.” 

Suddenly she couldn’t talk anymore. The lump of regret in her throat had swollen, cutting off her words and her breath. Aloy turned away from Gildun in humiliation as her face crumpled into a grimace of grief. Vaguely she felt him take the flask of tea from her, and she immediately covered her face with her hands and clenched her teeth to stop herself from sobbing. 

Gildun patted her back soothingly just the way Erend would have, and Aloy wished he wouldn’t; she didn’t need to add a layer of homesickness to the storm of anguish that was threatening to burst from her throat. 

She and Gildun sat frozen in a macabre tableau of grief for a long, torturous moment until Aloy managed to wrestle her face back into a semblance of composure. Finally she reached for the flask of tea again. “I don’t suppose you have any Scrappersap, do you?” she muttered. 

Gildun let out a rolling belly laugh, and Aloy managed a watery smile as well. “I’m afraid not, my girl. I ran out during my first week here, if you’ll believe it!” 

“You know, Gildun, somehow I do,” she quipped, and Gildun grinned at her.

“Aloy. May we speak?” Aloy looked up to find Aratak looming over her, his face as stern as ever.

Aloy nodded and rose to her feet, and Gildun gave her a final hearty pat on the shoulder and drifted away. “Aratak. What is it?”

“Ourea is impatient,” Aratak said bluntly. “She’s been talking about going into Thunder’s Drum alone if you don’t come soon, and I can’t let that happen.” 

Aloy scowled. This was the last damn thing she needed right now. “Tell Ourea to remember that I’m the Chieftain, and we’ll go into Thunder’s Drum when I’m ready,” she ordered. “Unless she wants to challenge me for the werak?” She raised her chin belligerently. 

“That will not be necessary,” Aratak replied quickly. “But we would appreciate an idea of when you’ll be ready. We’ve been waiting for days.” 

Aloy relaxed her combative posture and rubbed her forehead guiltily. “I know, Aratak. I know. I am sorry about the delay,” she said finally. She tugged one of her braids in frustration. “Give me this night,” she said. “We’ll depart tomorrow morning. That’s a promise.” 

Aratak inclined his head in acknowledgment and farewell. “Chieftain,” he said, then he strode away to where his sister waited.

Aloy rubbed her face one more time as a new layer of guilt painted itself over the jumble of her emotions. With all the drama that she and Nil were going through, she’d all but forgotten that the Spirit was in need of rescue and that the Daemon was corrupting machines throughout the land and producing monstrous machines to threaten the Cut. 

A fresh wave of self-disgust surged in her chest, and Aloy sat down heavily and resumed crafting blast bombs with the zeal of desperation. It seemed she was failing everyone these days. The least she could do was be prepared for tomorrow. 

***********************

The next morning, Nil still hadn’t come. 

Aloy settled her weapons on her back and her belt pouch around her waist as the day broke as grey and grim as ashes. She strode purposefully towards the path only to find Gildun waiting for her. 

His usually jolly face was painted with compassion. “Aloy… take care on that mountain, you hear? You owe me a story when you come back down.” 

On impulse, Aloy hugged him, and the firmness of his return embrace brought a lump to her throat. Aloy pulled away and swallowed hard. She hated asking this favour, but she’d be tortured if she didn’t. “Gildun, will you wait for Nil for me? Just… for a day or two? Just in case. I… he might not come. But just in case...” 

Gildun squeezed her arms. “Of course,” he said. “Of course I’ll wait.” 

Aloy took a deep breath and gripped Gildun’s arms in return. “Tell him… Just tell him to wait for me. Tell him I _begged_ him to wait. And…” Aloy swallowed hard; neither she nor Nil liked sharing their private feelings with other people - that was why they’d eloped, after all - but if ever there was a time to announce her feelings publicly, it was now. “Tell him I love him more than anything,” she said fiercely. “And I’ll be back.” 

Gildun’s eyes dripped with sympathy, but he smiled warmly at her. “I will. Now go on, girl. You’ve got a Daemon to defeat!” He released her arms and clapped her hard on the back, and Aloy stumbled slightly before continuing to the place where Ourea and Aratak were waiting. 

Ourea was pacing by a brazier, looking as impatient at Aratak had described, but the smile she gave Aloy was wider than any Aloy had yet seen on her face. “This is it - my chance to reunite with the Spirit!” she said fervently. “And perhaps, to reunite her with the Blue Light. It’s not a chance I would have had alone. I needed an outsider. Someone ignorant of our ways, but…” Suddenly she stopped and shook her head roughly. “No, not ignorant. I…”

Aloy interrupted her graciously. “Are you trying to thank me, Ourea?”

“Yes!” Ourea blurted. “Of course! That’s what you do: untangle knots, create possibilities. Thank you for making this pilgrimage possible.” She gazed gratefully at Aloy for a moment, then sighed. “I only wish it had not been necessary to humiliate Aratak. You were wise to let him come. He’s earned the right. Stubborn as stone, but he’s had to be. The war with the Carja demanded it.” Suddenly Ourea tilted her head and looked more closely at Aloy. “Speaking of Carja… what of your husband? Will he not be joining our pilgrimage?”

“He’s not the spiritual type,” Aloy replied firmly. She lifted her chin and kept her face utterly blank. She wouldn’t talk about this with anyone else. She _couldn’t._

Ourea nodded. “He told me as much,” she said, to Aloy’s surprise. “A non-believer in spirits and souls. But… there are many types of faith.” Ourea gazed at Aloy with a peculiar mixture of motherly fondness and wistfulness. “You’re a fortunate woman, Aloy, to hold such wholehearted belief from another.”

Aloy took a deep breath through her nose as another wave of grief threatened to break her. “What are we going to find up there, Ourea?” she said bluntly. 

Ourea blinked in mild surprise, then replied, “Ruins. Machines. And a door like that of a Cauldron. I have faith that you can find a way through it, Aloy, for beyond it lies the Spirit. I know I can find her there... though I do not doubt the Daemon has tried to hide the way.” Ourea glared fiercely up at the enormous flat face of the wall in front of them, and despite her pain, Aloy felt a flash of admiration for Ourea’s determination.

“It hasn’t been easy for you, Ourea. Getting back to this point,” Aloy acknowledged.

Ourea turned to look at her, and her eyes were brimming with emotion, with _love._ “It was all to hear the Spirit’s voice again. And this time, we both will.” 

Aloy nodded, and for the first time that day, she smiled. “I’d like that.”

************************

Finally he was here. A day late, maybe, but he was finally fucking here. But where was she?

Nil stalked into Longnotch, his eyes darting futilely around the settlement for a hint of her red hair. He’d already tapped his Focus, hoping for the characteristic _ping_ that would herald her proximity, and he knew she wasn’t within a 100-pace radius. So where the fuck was she?

“Nil? You’re- you’re here!” 

Nil turned and glared at Gildun, who was gaping at him like he was a ghost. “Have you seen Aloy?” he demanded without preamble. 

Gildun practically ran over to him and clapped him heartily on the shoulder. “You’re here! By the flaming forge, of course you are, I knew you’d be here sooner or later. Of course, sooner would have been preferable, _strongly_ preferable even-”

Nil grabbed Gildun’s scarf and pulled the Oseram toward him. “ _Where’s Aloy?_ ”

“She went to Thunder’s Drum with Ourea and Aratak,” Gildun blurted.

 _She went without me._ Nil released Gildun’s scarf and ran his hands through his hair. _Why would she do that?_ A sharp pang of hurt and anger slashed through his chest. He’d told her he would be here. Why wouldn’t she wait for him? 

Suddenly Nil realized that Gildun was still talking to him. Of course he was still fucking talking. “What?” Nil said distractedly. 

“I said, she asked me to tell you to wait for her.” 

Nil stared at Gildun, then barked out a laugh of disbelief. “She said to wait?” Disbelief and a fresh pang of anger shot through his chest. _She went into the machine-laden lair of some unknown Daemon and she said for me to wait? What kind of fucking spineless pile of slag does she take me for?_

“Nil, where have you _been?_ ” Gildun demanded, and suddenly Nil realized that Gildun looked extremely anxious. “Aloy waited for days. Aratak and Ourea wanted to leave immediately, but Aloy made them wait for an extra day. They couldn’t wait any longer. What happened?”

Nil roughly ran a shaking hand over his face. So Suntress had waited. She hadn’t given up on him. “Three Bellowbacks and a pair of Scorchers,” he replied distractedly. “And some bandits. I had to go back to Stone Yield for stitches. Usually Aloy would…” He broke off as he remembered Burgrend and Ourea’s description of the scene inside Thunder’s Drum: a killzone of machines, and an impregnable door… 

Nil had no doubt that Suntress could handle herself, but a wave of icy fear washed over him nonetheless. He remembered only too clearly the time she’d gone into the Eclipse base and come out by freefalling down a waterfall. Sometimes skill wasn’t enough. If something happened to her and he wasn’t there…

He looked back at Gildun. “Which way did they go?” 

Gildun hesitated. “Aloy said she wanted you to wait…”

Nil grabbed Gildun’s scarf again and yelled into his face. “Unless you’ve grown tired of wearing your guts on the inside, you’ll _tell me where she went!_ ” 

“By the flaming forge, all right, hold your Striders!” Gildun pushed Nil’s hands away, then pointed to a snowy path that led further to the east, towards a huge imposing stone wall that had the distinct look of one of the Old Ones’ bunkers. “They went that way. I’m not sure why, I thought they were headed to Thunder’s Drum, but…” 

“It’s a Cauldron,” Nil muttered to himself. Without another second’s pause, he strode towards the path. 

“Nil, hold on.” The obnoxious Oseram jogged after him tenaciously, and Nil idly wondered whether he really _would_ have to gut the man just so he would leave Nil alone. Gildun grabbed his shoulder again, and Nil snarled as he shoved Gildun’s hand away, but Gildun stared at him with a surprising amount of determination. “Aloy wanted you to know… she said that she loves you more than anything.” 

A sudden wave of longing almost brought Nil to his knees as Gildun rushed on. “My boy, I don’t think she wanted you to go flying after her into danger like a deranged Stormbird.” 

Nil looked sharply at Gildun. “I’m not the Stormbird. She is. I’m just her shadow.” He shoved past Gildun and ran towards the enormous wall. 

A huge circular hole had been blown in the wall, and Nil’s pulse ratcheted up; she was already inside. He scanned the area with his Focus: no machines, but unfortunately, no Suntress either. 

Nil strode through the enormous hole, ignoring the synthetic voice that politely informed him to remain calm and proceed to the nearest exit. Despite the anxiety vibrating through his chest, Nil couldn’t help but be amazed by the size of this bunker. It was bigger and more spacious than any of the other Old Ones’ bunkers that Suntress had taken him to before. 

Nil moved swiftly through the bunker, tapping his Focus every sixty paces or so to detect new threats, but the only machines he met were sparking corpses littered with arrows. He stopped briefly to examine a destroyed freeze Bellowback, and his heart squeezed with recognition at her distinct handiwork. _Suntress’s arrows,_ he thought, with a mixture of pride and sorrow.

He continued to move through the facility until finally he reached a raised platform overlooking a huge field teeming with Behemoths, Scorchers, Scrappers, and more than a few dead Banuk. _The killzone,_ he thought. On the far side of the field was an enormous triangular door that undoubtedly led into the main facility. The open field was clearly a death trap; there was no way Suntress would have gone that way. _Far too sloppy,_ Nil thought with a hint of wistful humour. 

He examined the huge space for an alternate route towards the huge fortified door, and almost immediately he spotted it: a tall, wending stairwell that hugged the rightmost periphery of the enormous room. The stairwell opened into an open upper level which led towards some kind of horizontal shaft. Nil peered closely at the shaft; it seemed to lead in the same direction as the triangular door. He’d probably be able to find his way to the center of the facility even if he had to take a detour. 

He tapped his Focus to see if there were machines along the stairwell route, but all he could detect were a few Scrappers. Nil narrowed his eyes suspiciously. It seemed too good to be true, but any route would be better than the killzone. 

He slid silently down the stairs towards the wending stairwell and made his way up, but when he reached the upper level, he spotted a subtle shimmer in the air and immediately began swearing. _Stalkers. Of course there are flaming cursed fucking Stalkers._ And not only Stalkers, but also a Longlegs to go along with the multitude of Scrappers that were casually patrolling his path.

Despite himself, Nil smiled a bittersweet smile. Suntress definitely came this way. All these machines were alive because she would have deemed it more efficient to sneak past them than to waste resources on taking them out. 

Nil sighed… and the nearest Stalker’s headlights flashed abruptly from yellow to red. Nil almost didn’t have time to roll aside before the Stalker launched itself at him with a metallic screech. 

It was a near miss, with the Stalker’s claws missing his shoulder by bare centimetres, but a successful miss. Nil pulled the Voice of Our Teeth from his back and bared his teeth in an animalistic grin. _All right, then. Let’s dance, you glorified pile of shards._

Suntress might be subtle and silent as a summer breeze, but Nil was chaos personified. And he’d take down any fucking machine that deigned to put itself between him and his wife.


	11. Live For You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're lost you can look and you will find me  
> Time after time  
> If you fall I will catch you, I'll be waiting  
> Time after time
> 
>  
> 
> [“Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper, covered by Iron & Wine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yKwYaq5Kf4)  
> 

Aloy limped painfully towards the Cauldron core. Her whole body ached from endlessly rolling and dodging the Fireclaw’s attacks. Her left flank would soon be sporting a large bruise beneath her shieldweaver armour, and the skin on her face felt tight and hot; it was as warm as an Oseram forge in this Cauldron, and as much as she had done her best to dodge the smoldering boulders thrown by the now-dead Fireclaw, there was no avoiding the scalding heat in the air. 

As she slowly shuffled towards the core, Aloy glanced tiredly at Aratak and Ourea. The siblings had fiercely held their own during the battle, weakening the Fireclaw with shock and ice attacks so Aloy’s arrows and blast bombs would make a bigger impact. Aratak looked largely unharmed; he was roughly patting Ourea’s arms and shoulders as though checking for injuries, but Ourea’s full attention was on Aloy and the core. 

Painfully Aloy pulled her spear from her back, the override end at the ready. She looked over at Ourea. “Are you ready to free CYAN?” she called. 

Ourea nodded eagerly, her eyes shining with hope. “I’ve been ready for years. Break her bonds, Aloy. Set her free from the Daemon.” 

Aloy nodded and took a deep breath. _Daemon, my ass. Of course it was HEPHAESTUS all along._ Aloy hadn’t even been surprised when the Spirit - that is, CYAN - had revealed the Daemon’s identity. _HEPHAESTUS and HADES, like two matching gears in a metalwork,_ Aloy thought bitterly. 

And yet, Aloy somehow felt satisfied at the answer to this mystery. It made perfect, logical sense. It confirmed theories about the Derangement that she’d been mulling over for years. She couldn’t help but imagine Nil’s ironic reaction when she told him; he’d probably make some sassy comment about her needing a new topic of conversation since she wouldn’t have this one to chew on anymore.

If he ever came back to her, that was. 

_Shut up, Aloy, and override the core already,_ she berated herself. This was definitely not the time to worry about her own stupid problems. 

Without another second’s hesitation, Aloy plunged the override end of her spear into the core’s control port… and almost immediately, an electric shockwave of pain travelled up her arms, rendering her neck muscles stiff and tense. 

“Critical threat detected. Autonomous defenses inoperative.” HEPHAESTUS’s horrible voice rang in her ears. Vaguely she heard Ourea scream her name, and then suddenly Aloy was on the ground, unable to breathe. The room around her was dark. Why was it so dark? It had been well-lit just moments before… _Forget the light, Aloy, breathe. Breathe, you need to breathe-_

After what felt like far too long, Aloy forced herself to cough, then gasped in a burning lungful of Cauldron air. Aloy wrested her eyes open just in time to see Ourea fall to her knees in front of the core’s port, with Aloy’s spear in her hands. 

Aloy tremulously pushed herself to her feet as CYAN’s smooth synthetic voice filled the room. “Restraints destroyed. Core access attained. I am initiating a chain reaction that will destroy the compromised elements of this facility. In order to maintain caldera stabilization, I must now transfer my command functions to the auxiliary data centre.” 

Aloy winced as a blinding, brilliant blue light suffused the room, emanating benignly from the pulsing waves of energy that seemed to herald CYAN’s transference. Then CYAN spoke again.

“Ourea… I’m free.” CYAN’s voice was warm and joyful, and somehow… very human.

Slowly Ourea stood and raised her face to the light, and Aloy’s heart skipped a beat at the expression of complete and utter happiness in the shamaness’s face. Ourea was bathed in the blue light, her skin glowing brilliantly from CYAN’s warm luminescence. Then Aloy noticed the trickle of blood from Ourea’s nose. 

“You must escape,” CYAN said, and Ourea fell. 

“Sister!” Aratak’s anguished voice echoed through the room as he flung himself at Ourea’s side. Gently he lifted Ourea’s shoulders onto his lap, then gently shook her and patted her face, but Aloy could see he knew the truth. 

Aratak was a warrior, familiar with battle and death, and the twisted despair in his face told Aloy that he knew Ourea was gone.

Suddenly the ground trembled, and Aloy hastily rolled in a painful dodge as a huge chunk of the ceiling suddenly slammed to the ground, spreading dust and shards of rock. _This entire place is going to blow,_ she thought in sudden desperation. Clumsily she crept over to Aratak’s side. 

His head was bowed, and in his hands he held the bluegleam pendant that Ourea had worn around her neck. Aloy grabbed Aratak’s wrist. “Aratak,” she said urgently.

He didn’t look at her. Gently he brushed the pendant with his thumb, and Aloy felt a surge of desperation as another huge rumble shook the facility. “Aratak!” she snapped, and shook his wrist roughly.

Finally Aratak raised his damp eyes to her face, and Aloy inhaled sharply to quell the surge of empathy that tried to crush her ribs. Instead, she gave Aratak the sternest, most forbidding stare she could muster. There was only one thing she could think of that might convince Aratak to leave. “Survive,” she ordered. “Prevail. You are Banuk. What else matters?”

Aratak took a deep breath and bowed his head again, and Aloy softened her voice slightly. “Aratak… she never would have wanted you to die here.” Aloy gazed down at the stillness of Ourea’s face. Her expression was calm, her lips quirked at the corners in a very slight smile. 

Ourea had fulfilled the destiny she’d marked for herself. She’d met CYAN, her Spirit, and passed away in the light of the one she’d loved. 

Gently Aloy squeezed Ourea’s blue-corded shoulder, then peered sympathetically into Aratak’s face. “Come on, Aratak. Let’s go,” she murmured. 

Finally Aratak nodded, and with a final gentle caress of his sister’s cheek, he stood. Together Aloy and Aratak ran out to the corridor, and not a moment too soon: the rumbling roar of the impending cave-in crescendoed sharply, and then the core began to implode in earnest. Aloy pointed up towards one of the mysterious conveyances that ran along the ceiling on their smooth looping tracks. “We have to grab one of those!” she yelled to Aratak. “There’s no other choice!” 

Aratak grimaced then nodded, and one after the other they leapt for the railings that lined the bottoms of the conveyances. Aloy winced as they soared over the omnipresent lava pools. Was it her imagination, or were these pools boiling more viciously than before? 

Suddenly a chunk of magma surged from the pool and flew up towards their conveyance, and Aloy’s grip slipped in startelement. Her heart flew into her throat as she started to fall, but Aratak’s large hand grabbed her wrist. “Aloy!” he shouted. 

Aloy clenched her teeth so hard it hurt; Aratak’s strong grip around her wrist was crushing but necessary. She watched with growing trepidation at the direction that their conveyance was taking them. Up ahead and to the right, there was a huge crack in the mountain that led outdoors; Aloy could see the whiteness of the snowy sky. But the enormous claw-like machine arms that pushed the conveyances forth would carry them away from the outdoors and to the left, back into the facility.

“Aratak!” she bellowed. “Get me on top of this thing!” 

Aratak grimaced, then with a grunt of effort, he swung his arm and flung Aloy towards the side of the conveyance. For a heart-stopping moment Aloy scrabbled for a grip until her fingers snagged a handhold on the side of the conveyance. She hefted herself onto the top of the conveyance and crouched for stability, then pulled one of her surplus blast bombs from her pouch belt.

 _Steady,_ she thought to herself as she stood. The crack in the mountain was approaching, and the momentum of their conveyance should carry them to it… if Aloy could knock the conveyance off course at the right moment. 

_Steady… and… NOW!_ Aloy hurled the bomb at the claw-like machine arms. The appendage exploded, and the conveyance trembled madly before flying off course towards the right. An _enormous_ shockwave of sound blasted Aloy from behind as the facility finally exploded. 

And then they were outside. It was blessedly cold, the world was white, her breath was knocked from her lungs, she was tumbling, everything was so _white-_

********************

 _Cold. Ugh. It’s so cold…_

Aloy shifted in discomfort and slowly cracked open her eyes. 

The sky was so completely _white_ that Aloy panicked for a split second, wondering if she’d gone blind. When the flickering shadows of snowflakes resolved themselves, she exhaled with relief, then gritted her teeth and pushed herself upright. 

Aratak was stirring as well. Slowly and painfully they rose to their feet, then turned to look up at Thunder’s Drum. Already the mountain’s characteristic roiling of ominous smoke had lessened until it looked more like a snowcloud than like an angry thunderhead. 

Aloy heaved a huge sigh, then briefly closed her eyes and lifted her face to the snow until Aratak’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Ourea is gone. But what of CYAN?”

Aloy opened her eyes and gazed at Aratak in sympathy, but his face had returned to its usual cold expression, so Aloy responded in an equally businesslike tone. “CYAN said she was transferring herself to the auxiliary center. I think she meant Ourea’s retreat at the end of the Shaman’s Path.”

Aratak nodded. “Then I will meet you there, for the last verse of my sister’s song.” His voice broke, and brusquely he turned away. 

“Aratak,” Aloy called, and he stopped and half-turned towards her. Aloy raised her chin. “I have to find my husband. He… should be waiting for me.” She swallowed hard; if she was lucky, he would be. “You go on to Ourea’s retreat. Talk to CYAN. I think… you’ll have a lot to talk about.” If CYAN’s intelligence - both intellectual and emotional - was anything like GAIA’s had been, Aloy was confident that CYAN would be a great comfort to Ourea’s brother. 

Aratak glanced at her, then nodded. “Thank you, Aloy. On Ourea’s behalf.” Then he turned away and disappeared into the snow.

Once he was out of sight, Aloy bent double, her hands on her knees as she finally allowed the depth of her retrospective fear crash over her. _That Fireclaw… that was horrific._ In many ways it had been worse than fighting a Deathbringer; at least a Deathbringer moved slowly. It seemed unfair that a machine so powerful could move so damn _fast._

Aloy allowed herself a minute to get her fear under control. Then she continued down the mountain towards the path that would take her south, back to Longnotch. 

Now that CYAN was safe and HEPHAESTUS had gone into hiding, all Aloy cared about was reuniting with Nil. They’d been separated for long enough. _And the first thing I’m going to do when we leave the Cut is set up that damn network so Nil and I can talk across distances,_ she thought to herself furiously. From all the datapoints and audiofiles she’d scanned about CYAN, Aloy was confident the AI would know something that could help her set up the blasted bloody network for once and for all. 

_Audiofiles._ Aloy suddenly remembered that Nil had scanned some audiofiles and datapoints in the Greycatch that Aloy had never gotten around to reviewing. What better time than now? She might as well distract herself from the empty pit in her chest until she met up with Nil. 

She tapped her Focus and swiped through on her interface until she found the audiofiles that Nil had sent, then tapped the triangular icon to play the first file.

A woman’s voice floated into Aloy’s ear. _“All right, so, okay, like... How do we want to start this farewell thingy?”_

 _“Hmm,”_ said a second woman’s voice. _“We might be the last people to ever see this place.”_

_“Uh, yeah. Hence, you know, the songs?”_

There was a datapoint attached to the audiofile, and Aloy flicked her fingers to read it. Despite herself, she smiled faintly; Nil must have been really desperate to drown out Gildun’s voice if he’d focused all his attention on these files. But he’d been right when he’d said Aloy would find them interesting.

She found the files heartbreaking, in fact. Nil had found records of a bond between two of the Old Ones, buried at the end of the world, with no hope from either of them that anyone would ever hear or read these files, but left behind nevertheless to mark the depth of their love for each other. 

Soon Aloy was so engrossed in the files that she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going; she relied on her feet to automatically carry her south. She tapped to the datapoint attached to the second-last audiofile.

> Dear Nobody,
> 
> We got into a fight, Laura and I. After practice, we went out for drinks. There's this Robar in downtown Cody, so we called an autocar and shuttled over. We were the only people there. With the park closing, Cody's becoming a ghost town.
> 
> The more we drank, the more passive-aggressive our banter became, snowballing out of control, metastasizing in the empty air between us, and then before either of us really knew what was happening, we were yelling at each other. I kept thinking, like, I'm not abandoning her, _she's_ abandoning _me_. And I guess she was probably thinking something similar.
> 
> Laura looked at me for what felt like ages. I thought she was going to start yelling. But then her hand crept over mine, and we just sat there together.
> 
> Bottoms up,  
>  Shelly

Aloy couldn’t see. Tears were blurring her vision, thick and hot, and furiously she wiped them on her grimy sleeve. Suddenly it felt desperately important to find out how the story had ended for Laura and Shelly, these two Old Ones from the Greycatch.

Aloy pulled up the last datapoint.

> We're family. We didn't inherit each other or settle on each other, we _chose_ each other. No amount of distance, no number of jerks in bad suits or obsequious robots, are going to tear us apart. 
> 
> So listen: on the off chance that someone ever actually does stumble onto these things, here's the truth. There was this band called Concrete Beach Party. And for a second, it was the best band in the world. And you, whoever you are, are really, really lucky. Because you're the only person who ever got to hear them.
> 
> See you never,  
>  The Last Girls on Earth

Abruptly Aloy veered off the path and sat heavily on a snow-covered boulder. She was crying so hard now that she could barely catch her breath.

It seemed that no matter how drastically different the Old Ones’ time had been compared to now, there were some things that didn’t change. Some people still defined their families by love, not by blood. People who loved each other still hurt each other. But Laura and Shelly, these two unknown Old Ones, they’d gotten it _right_. They’d fought, but they’d found a solution. 

These two women had overcome impossible odds - the end of the world, for All-Mother’s sake - because they loved each other so much.

So why couldn’t she and Nil?

Aloy pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes in an effort to quell the onslaught of tears, but her throat was throbbing from the effort it took to hold back her sobbing. Suddenly her Focus pinged, alerting her that there was one last audiofile that she hadn’t yet heard. 

Aloy gingerly wiped her nose on her sleeve, then tapped the ‘play’ icon. Her heart almost stopped with shock when Nil’s deep, soothing voice poured into her ear. 

_“I’ll always survive and prevail, Suntress. I still think they’re good words. But I live for you and only you. I hope you know that.”_

Aloy couldn’t breathe. Her heart was swollen far too big for her chest, shoving painfully at her ribs and lungs. Tears poured down her face, hot and scalding as lava, but even tears weren’t a sufficient means for expressing the bottomless pit of regret and sheer, unadulterated longing that was filling her throat, threatening to choke her. 

How had Nil made a recording on her Focus? When had he said this? Aloy didn’t remember him saying these words. This was something she would definitely have remembered. 

Suddenly Aloy wanted to scream. She was so _stupid_. So, _so_ fucking stupid. She shouldn’t have let him walk away. She should have waited for him in Longnotch. 

Of course Nil loved her. Of course he hadn’t left for good. Of course he was going to come back to her. Nil never broke his promises.

But that only meant one thing: something had stopped him from meeting her. 

So where the hell was he? 

************************

Aloy ran hard towards Longnotch, powered by fear as well as longing. It was nightfall now, more than a day later than Nil had said he would meet her, and Aloy’s overactive mind was conjuring all sorts of horrible possibilities for what could have happened to stop Nil, in all his reckless powerful glory, from making his way to her side. 

She stopped briefly at Stone Yield, just in case Nil was still there. As suspected, he had left, but it was obvious that he’d done as he’d set out to do: the bandits had been thoroughly eradicated, and the settlement was already firmly settled by Banuk villagers. Aloy felt a combination of pride and shame that he’d (probably unwittingly) helped these people all by himself. 

Aloy made a few rushed enquiries in the settlement. The villagers spoke of a silent Carja hunter who had single-handedly cleared the bandit camp, taught some of the inexperienced youth how to hunt in true Banuk tradition, then disappeared like a snow-ghost only to return half a day later demanding stitches to his face and left arm before fleeing again to the south like a spirit seeking the Blue Light. 

_Of course he accidentally made the Banuk appreciate him just by being his usual bloodthirsty self,_ Aloy thought with an agonizing surge of affection. _And of course he headed straight for Longnotch, exactly as he’d said he would._ The weight of regret in her chest was almost debilitating now, but Aloy forced herself to ignore it as she continued south towards Longnotch. Along the way, she scanned the surrounding area carefully with her Focus and almost immediately discovered the likely reason for Nil’s hold-up, and his need for stitches: a small field filled with butchered machines bearing signs of both stealth kills and messy, vicious melée attacks, liberally sprinkled with bloodied bandit corpses half-buried in the snow. 

The main pieces of the puzzle had come together. Now she just needed the final piece: the man himself. 

Aloy whistled for a Charger, then sped south to Longnotch as fast as the machine would carry her. The sky was turning black now, laced as usual with its eerie ribbons of green light, but Aloy didn’t feel tired at all, not even after the ordeal in Thunder’s Drum. All she felt was _need_ : a desperate need for Nil’s sarcastic voice, his blunt logic and poetic words of love, his hot hands and his hotter lips. She was so close to finding him, she was sure of it…

In Longnotch, Aloy immediately spotted Gildun, who hurried over to meet her. “Gildun!” she gasped. “Did you see-”

Gildun interrupted her, and the anxiety radiating from his usually-happy face made Aloy’s throat constrict. “He went in after you,” Gildun blurted. “Nil came just an hour or two after you left. Hammer to steel, Aloy, I tried to stop him, I _tried,_ but that man of yours is stubborn as an Oseram forgewife, I tell you. He refused to wait, he barrelled straight past me towards that grand old wall there…” 

Aloy suddenly became aware of a sharp pain on her scalp. Tensely she released her fist from where she’d been clutching her own hair. “He… of course he did,” she croaked, and a horrible laugh burbled from her chest. _Of course he followed me. Of course._ But the explosion… 

Aloy covered her face with shaking hands. The horror was rising in her throat like vomit, hot and bilious, panic washing her mind blank. 

“Aloy! What is it?” Gildun’s sharp voice pierced her panic, and Aloy clutched onto it desperately. “CYAN - the Spirit, she blew up the inside of Thunder’s Drum to stop the Daemon’s work,” she said bluntly. “Aratak and I barely made it out. If Nil…” 

She was shaking. Every muscle in her body felt stiff with the effort of not falling apart at Gildun’s feet. 

His face melted into a horrified expression of sympathy, and Aloy did _not_ like it. “Aloy…”

She shook her head tensely and pushed Gildun’s compassionate arms away. “ _No._ You said he went in an hour after me, maybe more,” she said firmly. “The Spirit didn’t blow up the whole facility, just the parts where the machines were being made. He might have avoided the explosion.” It was a slim chance, finer than silk thread, but Aloy refused to let it slip through her fingers. 

She looked at Gildun, and an irrational surge of anger washed over her at the compassion and wariness in his face. “He might have!” she yelled. “You don’t know him! He’s beat these odds before!” The memory of Nil crawling out of the Orbital Launch Base under Sunfall still haunted her dreams sometimes, but Aloy clutched it now like a lifeline. If he’d survived that, he could have survived this. 

_I’ll always survive and prevail, Suntress._

Aloy glared at her Oseram friend, heedless of the tears tracing down her cheeks. “Are you going to help me find him, or are you going to just stare at me like a gormless Grazer?” she snapped. 

“What do you need, Aloy?” Gildun asked gently, and Aloy took a deep breath to calm herself, then pointed towards the facility's entrance to the east. “I need you to look for him in the facility,” she told him. “Only go as far as the killing field. The machines are cleared up to that point, so you’ll be safe.” 

Gildun’s face was pale but determined as he nodded acquiescence. “Another day, another delve,” he said firmly, then smiled at Aloy with a hint of his usual twinkling humour. “You must have known I was looking for another adventure, my girl.” 

Aloy managed a weak smile. “I’ll head north, back along the base of the mountain range,” she said. “If you do find him, Gildun, just… wait here. I’ll come back if I don’t find him. And _keep him here,_ ” she added severely. She rifled in her pouches and thrust a bottle of Dreamwillow into Gildun’s hand. “Use this if you have to. It might be the only thing that stops him.” 

Gildun took the bottle from her hand, then abruptly pulled her into a firm squeezing hug that would have made Erend proud. A burn of grateful tears clawed at Aloy’s throat as she hugged him back. Finally Aloy pulled away, nodded a wordless thanks to the delver, then ran out of the settlement. As soon as she was alone, she whistled for a Charger, flung herself on its back, and headed north, back towards the head of Thunder’s Drum.

It was early morning by the time Aloy made it back to the steep cliffside that she and Aratak had free-falled down from the peak of Thunder’s Drum. Aloy slid off her Charger’s back and started scanning feverishly as she moved along the base of the mountain ridge. The explosion in Thunder’s Drum had been huge - _not the whole facility, though, not the whole thing, there’s a chance_ \- and Aloy thought that maybe it had blown open some other cracks in the mountain, similar to the one through which she and Aratak had escaped, that Nil could have used to get out as well. 

Carefully Aloy strode through the snow, tapping her Focus every fifty paces or so, watching for hints that he’d been here, listening desperately for the characteristic _ping_ that would indicate Nil’s Focus was within range. Then she spotted it, thirty paces to the northwest: a disturbed patch of snow, larger than an animal would do.

Aloy stumbled over to the patch of snow and tapped her Focus, and a trail appeared, illuminated with purple holomarkers. Aloy looked up, and her heart seized with hope: there was a narrow fissure in the rocky mountainside, large enough for a person to slip through, and a path of compacted snow led down from the fissure to the area of disrupted snow at her feet. 

“Nil,” she breathed, and her heart was suddenly beating in overdrive as an irrepressible grin pulled her at stiff facial muscles. _He did it. He made it out,_ she thought. Of course he did. He always made it through. 

Eagerly she inspected the disturbed patch of snow more carefully, and if it was possible, her heart rate surged even higher with anxiety: drops of blood were scattered in the snow, trailing off towards the west in the wake of a set of footprints. 

_Injured, but still moving,_ Aloy thought with forced optimism. _He can’t be far. I’ve only missed him by half a day, maybe._ But why had he headed west? 

_Who cares? He’s alive,_ she berated herself. It was more than a slim chance now. It was a very strong possibility, practically a certainty. Nil was the most stubborn survivor she knew. 

Aloy ran back to her Charger and followed Nil’s tracks. Her heart skipped a beat each time she saw a compacted space of snow where he’d fallen, but his tracks doggedly continued west and slightly north. There was less blood as the trail continued, and Aloy liked to think this was a good thing; maybe whatever wound he’d had had been staunched. _Maybe he actually bandaged a cut for himself,_ she told herself with a slightly hysterical giggle. 

Aloy was following the trail with such single-minded focus that she jumped with startelement when a familiar, warm voice suddenly hailed her. “Aloy! Hey! Come on up here!” 

_Ikrie?_ Aloy thought incredulously. Then Aloy realized where she was: the Snowchants Hunting Grounds. She slowed her Charger and veered up the hill. 

“Aloy! Are you up for a challenge…?” Ikrie’s voice trailed off and her eyes widened as she took in Aloy’s appearance, and Aloy suddenly realized what she must look like: covered in soot and char from the Fireclaw fight, her face a mess from combat and crying. 

“Spirits alive, Aloy, what happened to you?” Her eyes darted behind Aloy, then back to Aloy’s face. “Where’s Nil?”

“I don’t know,” Aloy replied. Her voice trembled, and she forced herself to strengthen it. “I’m on my way to find him. He… we split up. But I think he’s hurt.”

Ikrie’s face crumpled with guilt. “Did you split up because of me? Because of… what happened on the glacier?”

Aloy hesitated; it was hard to know the answer to Ikrie’s question. The whole business with Ikrie and Mailen had been the breaking point, but Aloy knew it would be a gross oversimplification to blame them for her and Nil’s fight. Besides, that didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered but finding Nil. “No,” Aloy said finally. “Listen, Ikrie, I have to go.” She turned her Charger and started back down the hill.

But a sudden, thundering roar of mechanical rage stopped her short… a roar she’d only heard one other time before. A chilling horror rippled over her skin. 

“What was that?” Ikrie gasped. To their left, Lauvak rose slowly to her feet, her eyes narrowed as she looked beyond the large wooden gate that blocked the Hunting Grounds off from the northern wilderness.

“Something comes from the north,” Lauvak grunted. 

“It’s a Fireclaw,” Aloy blurted. “A new machine from HEPH- err, from the Daemon. It has to be. That’s the only thing I know that sounds like that.” She tapped her Focus to confirm.

And her heart fell out through the bottom of her chest as a characteristic _ping_ notified her of the proximity of another Focus. 

“Oh no. No, no,” she breathed, but her denial was futile: she’d finally found Nil. He was on the other side of the huge gate barring the Hunting Grounds from the wilds.

And so was a Fireclaw. 

Aloy was off the Charger and pelting through the snow towards the gate before she could stop to think. Panting in desperation, she looked up at the gate; it was fastened in place with elaborate loops of Banuk cloth and machine metal. 

Aloy pulled her spear from her back and jammed the spearhead into the fastening loops, ready to wrench the gate open, but Lauvak’s stern voice called to her as she and Ikrie caught up to Aloy. “Outlander, _stop_. You risk allowing that beast into the Hunting Ground!” 

Aloy spun on Lauvak. “Who cares?” she bellowed. “You’re a hunter, and this is the most challenging prey you’ll _ever_ see! Are you going to cower from this challenge, or will you claim a new trophy to show your people?” Aloy turned back to the gate and levered her spear up. “I don’t care what you do, but I’m going through this gate, with or without your help!” 

Ikrie grabbed her arm, and Aloy almost threw her off until Ikrie’s words penetrated her frenzied mind. “Aloy, I’m with you,” she said loudly. “You helped me let go of someone. The least I can do is help you to hold on.”

Aloy took a deep breath and forced out a breath to shove away her distress. There was no space for that right now. If Aloy didn’t get to Nil now, nothing else would ever matter. “Help me with this gate,” she ordered. “If I can’t get through, I’ll go over.”

“Wait,” Lauvak said firmly. Then she gently ushered Aloy aside, pulled out a key-like mechanism, then uncoiled the loops that fastened the gate shut. Lauvak pulled the gate open just enough for Ikrie and Aloy to slip through. “Feats like this are for the young,” she told them quietly. “May the Blue Light bless your hunt.”

Ikrie nodded gratefully to Lauvak, but Aloy flung herself through the gap without another word and pelted towards the edge of the mountain ridge that looked into the shallow valley where the Fireclaw was flailing its arms in rage. 

And there he was: thirty paces away from the Fireclaw, standing tall with his bow drawn, her Carja killer, valiantly shooting arrows at HEPHAESTUS’s most horrendous creation. 

Aloy clenched her teeth to stop herself from screaming his name; he couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. She turned to Ikrie, who was staring at the Fireclaw with eyes as wide as saucers. “Freeze attacks are its weakness,” she hissed. “Use your sling to weaken it. Then shoot those fluid sacs on the shoulders and chest if you can. Try to stay hidden.” She took off at a crouching run towards the valley. 

“Wait! Where are you going?” Ikrie demanded, her voice tight with anxiety. 

“Providing a distraction!” she yelled back, and skidded down the slope into the valley. 

Nil’s attention was fully focused on the Fireclaw, but from this closer vantage, Aloy could see that he was struggling; his posture was bowed with fatigue, and his arms trembled as he pulled his drawstring back. Aloy, on the other hand, was running off of pure desperate energy now. Swiftly she drew three precision arrows, nocked them in her Banuk bow, and sent them flying at the same moment that Nil released his arrow. 

An enormous spark of damage flew up from the Fireclaw’s right shoulder. Nil whipped around in surprise, and finally, _finally,_ after far too many endless days and sleepless nights, silver eyes met hazel, and Aloy was _alive._

Her throat swelled with wild joy as a heartbreakingly handsome, feral grin lit Nil’s face. She was warm again, heated by the molten quicksilver of his pale grey eyes. Aloy had never seen anything more beautiful than his soot-streaked, sweaty, _living and breathing_ face, and she wasn’t sure she ever would again. 

A metallic roar of protest tore the air, and Aloy and Nil whipped their attention back to the Fireclaw in time to see a barrage of ice bombs strike the machine’s left flank. Aloy tapped her Focus so she could talk to Nil as she ran towards the Fireclaw. “Ikrie is on the ridge,” she yelled. “I’ll tie it down. Keep shooting the shoulders and chest!” 

“Ah, that bossy tone. It’s like a symphony to my ears,” Nil drawled, and Aloy laughed even as a spike of anxiety pierced her chest. His voice was deep and sardonic as ever, but rough with exhaustion. _We have to kill this Fireclaw as fast as possible. He needs rest,_ she thought feverishly. 

With an extra spurt of speed, Aloy bolted towards the Fireclaw, purposely making as much noise as she could in order to draw the Fireclaw’s attention away from Nil and Ikrie. She hauled her ropecaster from her hip and immediately began tethering the Fireclaw.

An ominous _twang_ rang through the air as one of the wire-reinforced ropes broke, and Aloy snarled but continued her efforts. The same thing had happened in the Cauldron: the damn Fireclaw was so strong that more than a dozen ropes were needed to immobilize it. 

After a long, agonizing effort, the beast was tied down, and Aloy didn’t need to say a word: Ikrie and Nil knew what to do. Ikrie’s ice bombs rained down, covering the beast in a thick layer of hoary frost, and Aloy carefully shot triple precision arrows at the Fireclaw’s chest, checking her aim carefully for maximum damage while Nil did the same at the beast’s left shoulder. 

Suddenly an explosion bloomed from the metal beast’s chest, and Aloy was thrown back by the blast. A fresh roar of fury rent the air as the flaming Fireclaw broke free of its bonds and shoved itself to its feet, then raise its front claws. 

“Nil, get clear!” Aloy gritted into her Focus, and just in time; the snow beneath Nil’s feet melted, then started to steam. Nil flung himself to the side as the ground suddenly burst into a red-hot boil. This was one of the Fireclaw’s most inexplicable but horrific attacks. 

Aloy kept her eyes on Nil while she feverishly crafted more wire-reinforced ropes, then pelted towards the Fireclaw again and started tying it down for a second time. Bit by bit the three hunters wore the Fireclaw down; Aloy, Ikrie and Nil worked together like an Oseram gearwork, their ice bombs, ropes and arrows flying through the air with precision born of desperation. 

Soon all three of the Fireclaw’s fire sacs were destroyed and the machine was glittering with the sparks of their destruction. Aloy allowed her shoulders to relax slightly; she could tell the Fireclaw was almost down. 

But her relaxation proved to be a mistake. As Alow drew another precision arrow, the Fireclaw heaved itself to its feet, then lunged at Nil and _grabbed_ him. 

Nil’s strangled yell of pain and shock ripped through Aloy’s ear, and Aloy dimly realized she was screaming as well. She ran towards the Fireclaw, desperately shooting arrow after arrow at the grinding claw that was squeezing Nil’s chest, and Ikrie’s bombs were freezing the claw to make it brittle-

The claw shattered in a shower of metal and ice, and Nil fell to the ground. 

Aloy’s ears rang dully as though she was underwater. Her mind felt like it was working in slow motion. She drew the slowest precision arrow she’d ever drawn while she slid into a crouch over Nil’s still form, then loosed it directly into the Fireclaw’s eye. 

Aloy ignored the earth-shattering crash of the dead Fireclaw hitting the ground. With desperately trembling hands she rolled Nil onto his back and pressed her fingers to his neck.

He had a pulse. 

Relief crashed over her so hard that she felt light-headed. A shaky breath exploded from her lips, and she leaned over his face to see if she could feel his breath on her cheek. 

_Yes. There,_ she thought, with a surge of combined hope and anxiety; he was breathing, but his breaths were shallow. _Broken ribs, probably,_ she thought, trying hard to fight back the terror. 

He was hurt, but he was alive. He’d be fine. He always was. This would be no different.

“Ikrie!” she yelled, then she whistled a piercing tone to summon two Chargers. She knelt at Nil’s head and effortfully pulled him up with her hands under his armpits until he was propped slightly upright against her chest. 

“Ow.” His protest was little more than a whispered grunt, but it was enough for Aloy to heave a huge sigh of relief as his eyes fluttered open.

She stroked the right side of his face gently; the left was marred with a half-stitched cut. “Hey,” she said shakily. “I’m going to get you indoors, okay? We’ll find somewhere warm, and I’ll get you some help. Do the Banuk have healers? I haven’t seen any here. They just seem to have hunters and shamans.” Aloy knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t help it; he was alive, and he was awake, and now that they were together again everything would be fine-

Nil opened his mouth to speak, but his face twisted in a grimace of pain as he tried to inhale. “Don’t talk,” Aloy said hurriedly. “Some of your ribs are probably broken. Breathing will hurt.” 

“‘S just a scratch,” Nil muttered, and his eyes began to drift shut. 

“Nil,” Aloy said sharply, but he didn’t open his eyes. Aloy shook his shoulder firmly. “Nil!” 

At that moment, Ikrie skidded to her side with a spray of snow, and the two Chargers Aloy had summoned cantered over. “Aloy,” Ikrie panted. “Is he...?” 

“Get me a big metal panel from that Fireclaw,” Aloy interrupted. “I need a sled. He needs to be inside, get out of this bloody cold.” _Ourea’s retreat,_ Aloy thought desperately. _It’s the closest bunker._

Ikrie darted away, and Aloy pressed her lips to Nil’s forehead. His skin felt cool. It wasn’t like him. His skin was supposed to be warm. He was the one who always kept her warm.

She shook his shoulder again, but he didn’t rouse. Compulsively Aloy felt for his pulse again, then rested her hand gently on his chest to check he was breathing. 

“You’re going to wake up, you hear me?” she hissed fiercely to him. Gently she wiped her tears from where they’d dripped onto his face. “You’re not getting away from me now. Survive and prevail, remember?” 

Ikrie’s hasty crunching footsteps approached again. “Okay, I’ve rigged up a sled,” she said briskly. “Come on, Aloy, let’s get him moving. I’ll help you take care of him.” 

Aloy wiped her face impatiently and looked up at Ikrie. “You… you know the healing arts?”

Ikrie looked at her like she was nuts. “Of course I do. I’m a hunter. How else would we survive? Now come on.” 

Aloy nodded tightly and smoothed her fingers over Nil’s sharp cheekbones. He had to be fine. 

Nothing else mattered.


	12. Breathe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll never be alone  
> I'll be with you from dusk ‘til dawn  
> I'll be with you from dusk ‘til dawn  
> Baby, I'm right here
> 
> I'll hold you when things go wrong  
> I'll be with you from dusk ‘til dawn  
> I'll be with you from dusk ‘til dawn  
> Baby, I'm right here
> 
>  
> 
> [“Dusk Till Dawn,” by ZAYN & Sia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X930_IyhGfo)  
> 

“Bring me a crate, and are there any blankets here? We should prop him up. He’ll breathe better if he’s upright.” 

Whose voice was that? That wasn’t the voice he wanted to hear. 

“I’ll look around.” _There._ That was the voice he wanted. _Suntress._

A scraping sound followed, then a hot breeze on his cheek. “Up you come,” she whispered. Hands under his armpits. 

Excruciating pain - _no no no NO NO-_

*************

“Aloy, he’s coming round!”

Nil opened his eyes. A pale, blurry face with Banuk headgear wavered in his vision. “Luka?” he croaked, then winced. His chest _really_ fucking hurt. 

The face turned away, and then a second face was there, his favourite face, the only face that mattered. Nil blinked hard. He needed to see her clearly. 

“Nil, Luka’s not here. This is Ikrie. Remember her?” 

Nil didn’t care. “Suntress,” he whispered, then he ran out of breath. Tried to inhale, couldn’t. It hurt too much. 

Her hands were on his face, cool and soothing. “Take it easy,” she murmured. “Don’t talk.” 

He ached to touch her, but he was too tired and his arms were so heavy.

“Aloy, he really should try to breathe more deeply,” Ikrie warned. “His lungs will get sick if he doesn’t.” 

“Can’t,” Nil grunted. “Hurts.” 

“Here,” Suntress said, and she held a bottle to his lips. Automatically Nil swallowed the bitter potion, then grimaced. “I hate this,” he muttered. 

Suntress laughed, and Nil instantly felt warmer. “At least it’s not salvebrush berries,” she said gently. “It’ll help with the pain.” 

Nil didn’t care; she could say anything, anything at all. He could listen to her voice all day. 

“Breathe, Nil. Take a big breath, okay?”

He nodded and closed his eyes. He just needed to sleep a bit first.

********************

He could see the Blue Light. It glistened in the air, falling heavily on the hearts of machine and flesh alike. 

“He’s feverish. Aloy, he needs to breathe more deeply. I know it hurts-”

“I’m _trying_ , Ikrie.” Hands on his face, cold as ice. Why was Suntress so cold? Had the Blue Light taken her?

Nil forced his eyes open. She smiled, but her smile was wrong. Scared. Why was she scared? 

“Nil,” she said. He loved her voice so much. “Nil, you need to breathe deeply. Come on. Try.”

Nil obeyed, and his ribs screamed in protest. He grimaced. “Fuck this.” 

Suntress laughed, but a tear fell down her cheek. That was wrong. Everything about this was all wrong. That face that was like Luka’s but wasn’t, that was wrong. This room that was warm but dark, this was wrong. 

“It’s all wrong,” Nil tried to explain. “It’s-” He broke off as a sudden wracking cough seized his body. 

_Fuck fuck fuck it hurts._ He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t cough. It was too much. 

“Fire and spitting Metal Devil of the Sun.” Her curses flowed off her tongue like a waterfall. He wanted to go to the waterfall now. Could they go there now? He wanted to ask her, but he couldn’t get the air to speak. 

“Nil, drink this, okay? It’ll help with the pain. I need you to breathe deeply.”

 _I need you._ Nil was relieved. He needed her too. He wasn’t alone in this. 

She pressed the bottle to his lips again, but he wasn’t ready. The bitter fluid trickled into his throat, it was uncomfortable, he was coughing again- 

“Damn. _Damn!_ I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Her hands trembled against his face. 

The cough was agonizing, ripping layers from the inside of his lungs, the layers were rising up to his mouth, _ugh-_

Nil turned his head to the side and spat a gobbet of phlegm onto the ground, then panted shallowly for breath. “Disgusting,” he muttered. 

She laughed again, but the laugh was a sob, and it was all _wrong_. Why wasn’t she laughing raucously, like the wild demon of fire that she was? “Say it,” he mumbled. He wanted her to tell him he was disgusting. He’d wanted to hear her say it for days. 

“I love you,” she said instead, and Nil relaxed and closed his eyes. That was even better. 

“Nil, don’t fall asleep yet. Don’t fall asleep!” 

_Why not?_ The Blue Light was there, a Banuk torch just outside of reach, and actually, it was quite soothing. Not as soothing as her voice, but soothing enough.

The Blue Light was there, ribbons of light shining in dark skin. Red ribbons shining in a dark cage. A repository born and fostered and quashed to a mere spark in the shadow of ignorance. 

“Luka was almost right,” Nil muttered. She’d be so smug when he told her. 

**********************

He was so cold. The cold of the Metal World seeped into his flesh. Only fire and destruction would burn it away. So why were they putting ice on him? 

Nil tried to twist away, but a flare of pain ripped across his ribs. “Stop,” he muttered. 

“Nil, just stay _still!_ ” Suntress was angry at him. Nil was dismayed. What had he done now?

“Easy,” said Luka. No, not Luka. What was her name again? It didn’t matter. “Aloy, try the salvebrush berry paste. It’ll be easier for him to get down than the potion.”

“Okay,” Suntress whispered. She was being so obedient. That was wrong too. She was a Stormbird. She cast the shadows over this world. Nil opened his mouth to say so, but another wracking, wet cough tore his ribs. 

He instinctively folded his arms over his chest, and that helped with the pain a little. He turned his head and spat. Painfully he inhaled. “No salvebrush berries.” 

Suntress tutted loudly, and Nil grinned. _There_ was her fire that he’d missed so much. “I missed you,” he rasped. “That was the longest year of my life.” 

She straddled his lap carefully and cradled his neck in her hands, and Nil relaxed. Finally something was going right. “It was only a few days, Nil,” she said gently. 

Nil frowned. “No. It was a year. It’s a good thing Luka married us. Now you’re stuck with me.” 

“He’s delirious,” Not-Luka said matter-of-factly. “Give him those berries.” 

“No,” Nil said loudly, then grimaced in pain. 

“Nil, look at me,” Suntress said. Nil frowned. He _was_ looking at her. It wasn’t his fault she kept moving out of his line of sight. 

Her hand was cradling his jaw. She held a spoon to his mouth, and Nil instinctively pressed his lips shut. He jerked his face away. _I’m not an idiot,_ he wanted to say, but when he tried to inhale so he could yell at them, it _hurt._

Then Suntress pressed her face to his cheek. “Nil, you’re sick,” she whispered. “If you don’t let us heal you, you could die.” 

Nil laughed weakly, but it sounded _wrong_. Wet and sticky. He cleared his throat. “I won’t die. I promise,” he told her soothingly. 

She shivered, and Nil ran his hand soothingly over her back. “I promise,” he said insistently. 

“You’ve never broken a promise before,” she retorted, and Nil frowned at the tremor in her voice. “Don’t start now. Take the berries. _Please._ ”

His face was wet. She was crying. “Fine,” he said. Anything to stop her tears. 

She gulped a breath, then lifted the spoon to his lips again, and Nil swallowed the disgusting berry pulp. 

Then he jolted in discomfort and shock as Not-Luka pressed the ice against his ribs again. “Fuck off,” he protested.

“Charming,” Not-Luka muttered, and Suntress clasped his neck in her hands again. Her thumbs stroked his cheekbones, and her skin was so cold it gave him goosebumps. “Nil,” she whispered. “We need to cool you down. Okay? You have a fever.”

“No, no ice. I’m cold. What I need is fire,” Nil explained. “Burn down the old bones to make something new.” There was fire in his lungs already, there had to be. That’s why they hurt so much.

“Just… hold still, okay?” Her thighs were tense on his hips, her hands pressing on his shoulders too hard, and then Not-Luka was forcing the ice on him again. 

Viciously Nil tried to twist away, and the pain was _excruciating_ , turning his vision black for a moment. “No!” he yelled, then immediately regretted it when his lungs turned inside out with phlegm-laced agony. _Fuck fuck fuck it hurts…_

“Mix some Dreamwillow with the berries,” Not-Luka snapped. “Just a little bit. He needs to calm down.” 

“No. No Dreamwillow. No Dreamwillow-”

Suntress pressed her cool cheek to his face again. Strange that she was cold; she was his fire demon, born in fire and destruction to heal the world. “Nil, take the Dreamwillow. For me. Do this for me.” 

“No,” Nil said weakly, but she wouldn’t give up. She was so stubborn. His stubborn Stormbird. “Do this for me, Nil, okay? Eat this.” She held the spoon to his lips again. 

The berries were sickly-sweet _and_ bitter now, and Nil swallowed them with disgust. “Why are you angry?” he asked her blearily. “Don’t send me away this time, Stormbird. I’ll follow you. I won’t complain.”

His face was wet again. Her cheek was cold. It was raining on the Metal World. The soldiers were prepared, but nothing could have prepared them, not really. Nothing could prepare them for death being brought to them on metal legs. 

Machines of flight cut the skies. They peel back the clouds, revealing the world beneath: emerald-green shrouded in layers of ashes. Machines fight men fight machines, and so it goes until the end of time. When time begins again, so it goes, neverending.

Born in fire and destruction to heal the world. The emeralds will be mined again, thanks to her. But the cycle will continue until the end of time. Men fight machines fight men fight machines fight… 

**********************

Nil sighed deeply, then frowned at the dull pain in his ribs and opened his eyes. 

He looked around in confusion for a moment before recognizing their surroundings: Ourea’s retreat. He was in a side room, one of the Old Ones’ ancient storage rooms. 

A soft murmur drew his attention. Nil glanced down, and his heart swelled with a rush of joyful relief: Suntress was asleep curled beside him, her arms tucked up to her chest and her hair spread around her head like a halo of fire. 

Even in the eerie blue light of the Banuk torch in the corner, Nil could tell her skin was pale. Her cheekbones were sharper, her cheeks slightly hollowed, and there were dark circles of fatigue under her eyes. She was the most exquisite thing he’d ever seen. 

But Nil was confused. Why did she look so exhausted and thin?

A noise from the main area drew his attention, and Nil instinctively reached for his knife, ready to defend his sleeping wife. 

Ikrie shuffled into the room with a cup in her hands, and Nil relaxed his grip on his knife. “Ikrie,” he said quietly. 

She jolted with surprise, and her eyes flew to his face. “Nil! You… you recognize me?”

Nil raised one eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Ikrie smirked and quietly approached him, then kneeled and offered him the cup. “You’ve been calling me Not-Luka for weeks.” 

Shock jolted through him. “We’ve been here for _weeks?_ ”

Ikrie offered him the cup more insistently, and Nil took it. “Three weeks,” Ikrie confirmed. “Well, you and Aloy have been here for three weeks. I’ve been in and out. Hunting and foraging.” 

“Three weeks? Why?” Nil demanded quietly. He reached down and gently brushed an errant lock of Suntress’s hair away from her face. 

Ikrie settled herself into a cross-legged position. “You’ve been really ill,” she said matter-of-factly. “There was fluid in your lungs because you refused to breathe deeply enough.” She gave him a sardonic look. “You’re a terror to look after, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” Nil muttered. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Suntress. Gently he traced his fingers around the pale shell of her ear. “What about Aloy? Is she sick too?”

“No,” Ikrie said softly. “She was just… worried. She refused to leave your side. Wouldn’t leave this place, hasn’t been eating much.” Ikrie pursed her lips. 

A sharp needle of guilt pierced Nil’s chest, and he swallowed hard as he stroked his thumb over Suntress’s cheek. “I’m fine now. She doesn’t have to worry anymore,” he said.

Ikrie chuckled, and Nil frowned at her. She shook her head. “She said you’d say that,” Ikrie drawled, then jerked her chin at the cup that was cooling in Nil’s hands. “Drink that. Actually, here.” Ikrie turned and rifled around in a small satchel on the ground, then pulled out a small boarskin flask and tried to pour the contents into Nil’s cup.

Instinctively Nil jerked the cup away, and Ikrie gave him an exasperated look. “It’s just ochrebloom. There’s nothing in that cup but winterfresh. Or do the Carja believe that winterfresh has healing properties?” She stared at him mockingly.

Nil narrowed his eyes at her, but she simply tilted her head cheekily, and finally Nil reluctantly held the cup out. Ikrie poured the ochrebloom into the cup, and Nil slugged the beverage back in three gulps before handing the empty cup back to her.

Ikrie rose and got herself a new cup of winterfresh, then returned and sat beside Nil, sipping her tea while Nil lightly ran his fingers through Suntress’s hair. They sat in silence for some time.

Then Ikrie spoke quietly. “Aloy told me about your fight. She blames herself.” 

Nil didn’t reply. It wasn’t Ikrie’s business. But then she said, “Aloy said you chose to leave.” 

“I shouldn’t have,” Nil said immediately. “It was stupid.” He traced Suntress’s strong eyebrows with his thumb. He’d thought he had to prove he could survive without her, and he had, but look what it had cost. 

“You… you’ll admit it was stupid to leave?” Ikrie sounded surprised, and Nil raised one eyebrow at her. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

Ikrie examined him carefully, and Nil felt a flash of annoyance. Suntress’s friends were always _doing_ this. He looked back down at Suntress and idly rolled one of her hair-beads between his fingers. 

“The two of you… have something special,” Ikrie murmured. Nil shrugged; he knew that. There was no one in the world like Suntress.

Ikrie was quiet for a long time, then she spoke again. “That’s what I wanted. With Mailen. And it was like that for a while, when we were younger. But then… the law of survival became everything to her. And I was just… a shadow in the snowprints she left behind.”

Nil felt a chill of recognition. For once, he had some advice to share. “Nobody should just follow their partner without question,” he intoned. Then he smirked sarcastically. “Or so they tell me.” 

Ikrie looked at him again with that obnoxious appraising look, then her face softened. “That’s why you walked away from Aloy?” 

Nil frowned slightly; he thought she knew this already. He nodded to confirm, and Ikrie leaned away from him in surprise. “I thought… well, Aloy thought you left because you were angry.”

Nil frowned more deeply. This was getting confusing. “I _was_ angry.” 

Ikrie was staring hard at him now. “Aloy thought you weren’t going to come back.”

Nil smiled. Surely Ikrie was joking. He laughed quietly. “That’s ridiculous. She wouldn’t think that.” 

But Ikrie didn’t laugh. “Walking away in anger from someone you love… It’s a terrible thing to do to someone.” Ikrie’s voice was quiet still, but hard with anger. “You’re lucky you have someone who waited for you to come back.” Abruptly she stood and walked out of the room. 

Nil watched her go, then looked back down at Suntress. Her normally-fierce face looked so vulnerable in sleep, and another dagger of guilt pierced his heart. Had she really thought he wasn’t going to come back? Why would she _think_ that? 

He stroked her cheek again. She frowned slightly in her sleep and shifted slightly, and the fox-fur blanket slid off her shoulder. Nil gently pulled the blanket back up. “I’ll always come back,” he murmured to her. “You’re the heat that keeps my blood moving, Suntress. How could you forget that?”

She pouted her fine lips in sleep and snuggled closer to his side. A wave of tenderness washed through him, and Nil tried to slide down onto his side so he could hold her closer, but the twisting motion sent a wave of dull pain across his ribcage.

Nil curled his lip in frustration. He’d had cracked ribs before, but not multiple ribs on both sides of his ribcage at once. He settled back as comfortably as he could and closed his eyes, listening to the quiet sound of Suntress’s breathing. 

Some time later, he heard Ikrie’s footsteps approaching again. He opened his eyes to find her standing at the doorway, a cautious look on her face. 

Nil raised his eyebrows questioningly, and she shifted her weight awkwardly before stepping slowly into the room. “I overstepped. Earlier, when we were talking,” she said quietly. “I apologize.” 

Nil shrugged. “It’s all right.” And to his surprise, he meant it. Usually he disliked when Suntress’s friends (particularly Vanasha) told him what was or wasn’t acceptable behaviour, and he hated it when her friends ( _particularly_ Vanasha) were right. But for some reason, Ikrie’s interference didn’t bother him. Maybe it was something about her manner; she was brisk and blunt sometimes, like Suntress, but sarcastic too, like him. 

Nil mentally dismissed the issue. Whatever it was, Ikrie didn’t bother him as much as Suntress’s other friends. He jerked his head for her to approach. 

Ikrie’s shoulders relaxed, and she settled herself beside him again. “Aloy said you’ll go back to the Sundom eventually, now that Ourea’s Spirit is saved.” 

Nil raised his eyebrows; he hadn’t known that Ikrie knew of the Spirit, but it made sense that Suntress would have told her. “Eventually, yes,” he confirmed. “But I have to say, these frozen lands have been a peaceful break. Aloy’s duties in the Sundom and the Sacred Lands require a lot of talk and tinkering. These lands are simpler: a call for action and arms.” He smiled. “It’s good to get her blood moving. And if she’s called to move blood from guts to ground, all the better.” 

Ikrie stared at him, then a sudden laugh burst from her lips. She covered her mouth quickly as Aloy grimaced and shifted in her sleep. “That’s the most I’ve ever heard you talk,” Ikrie whispered. “I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.” 

Nil smiled faintly. “And you, ice-hunter? What will you do?”

Ikrie gave him a half-smile in return, then shrugged. “I don’t know, really. I guess I’m not in any hurry to go back to Ban-Ur… not yet.” She stretched her legs out in front of her. “I always wanted to be a snow-ghost, free to do what I will.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a long time. Then Nil spoke without really meaning to. “Don’t go back to Ban-Ur.” Ikrie was a stranger to him, but she felt… familiar somehow. Nil got the sense that she wasn’t suited for the place she’d come from. 

Ikrie looked at him with a little frown. “Then where should I go?”

Nil raised an eyebrow at her. What a stupid question. “Anywhere you want.” 

Ikrie looked away and didn’t reply for a while. “I’ve never been anywhere alone before… except here.” Hurriedly she wiped her face with her fingers. 

Nil pursed his lips. He had a strange, uncomfortable feeling in his stomach that felt something like guilt, but different. “You wouldn’t be alone. Aloy will introduce you to people in the Sundom,” Nil said, then bit the inside of his cheek. He shifted restlessly; the uncomfortable feeling seemed to have taken control of his tongue. Grudgingly he added, “I’ll introduce you to Luka. She’s a friend.” 

“Luka. She’s Banuk?” Ikrie asked, and Nil nodded. “She’s a shaman. She married us,” he explained, with a little nod to Suntress. 

Ikrie grinned suddenly. “A Banuk shamaness who married two outlanders?” She laughed softly. “A breaker of traditions. I think we’ll get along just fine.”

Nil smirked as Ikrie settled back more comfortably against a crate, and they sat in silence for a while longer. Then Ikrie sighed again, but with a smile. “Well. Now that you’re lucid, you should start moving around more. Does it hurt to breathe?”

Cautiously Nil took a deep breath; the ache was still there, but it wasn’t excruciating anymore. He shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“That means yes,” Ikrie muttered ruefully, then rose to her feet. “You should get up, walk around.” She looked down at him expectantly.

Suntress murmured again in her sleep, and Nil looked down at her exhausted, beautiful face. “Not yet,” he murmured to Ikrie. Then he tucked one of Suntress’s precious braids behind her ear.

He wasn’t ready to leave her side just yet. 

***********************

“Nil?” 

Nil opened his eyes and smiled sleepily. Her hazel eyes were his favourite way to wake up. He reached up and ran one of Suntress’s braids through his fingers. “What a brilliant sunrise you are,” he told her. “Flame-red rays thrown over the cream of your skin, like blood on snow. You’re flawless.” 

She beamed at him and straddled his hips, her hands cradling his face. A tear slipped down her cheek as she laughed. “You’re really awake,” she said. “Ikrie said you were, but…” 

Nil hungrily slid his hands along the curves of her waist. “I’m fine, Suntress, I promise. You can stop worrying.” Nil, on the other hand, _was_ worried; her ribs felt more prominent than before, even through the thickness of her blue Banuk coat. 

She clutched his collar, her knuckles white with strain. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for weeks,” she said. “I just want to be sure.” 

Nil reached up to cradle her neck with one hand and slid his other hand along the length of her thigh, but the unavoidable simmer of lust in his gut was tempered by increasing concern. Even her thighs had less muscle to them. 

He slid his hand into her hair and pulled her towards him. “How’s this for sure?” he whispered, then took her lips in a kiss. 

It was like coming home. It was like basking in the Carja sun, but _better_. Her tongue was in his mouth, her passion blazing through him and giving him the heat he was missing. Nil greedily smoothed his palms over her back and her thighs, and frustration spiked through him; all he could feel was thick Banuk cloth, but all he wanted to feel was her skin. 

Hastily he fumbled at the buckles and ties that fastened her gorget to the lower half of her coat, and her fingers were over his, trying to help but getting in the way. Reluctantly Nil broke from the kiss. “I hate this fucking coat,” he hissed. “Your Carja armour comes off so easily. This is _difficult_.” 

She laughed breathily, and Nil went light-headed for a moment; that was the sound he loved best, and it resonated through his chest like the purest note from a harp. “You just need more practice,” she said, and she smoothed her hands eagerly over his chest. 

Nil grimaced and involuntarily jerked away from her touch. The pressure of her hands on his chest sent a wave of dull pain across his injured ribs.

To Nil’s great dismay, Suntress immediately slid off of his lap, her face twisted in apology. “Sorry,” she said with a wince. “Does it hurt?” She didn’t wait for an answer; already she was rifling in Ikrie’s satchel, pulling out another small boarskin flask of that damn ochrebloom potion.

Nil groaned. “Suntress, enough with the potions. Will you just kiss me already?”

She smiled, but that little crease of worry sat between her eyebrows, and Nil sighed; the mood was broken. She forced the boarskin flask into his hand and kissed him gently. “Ikrie will be back soon anyway,” she said.

“Hmm,” Nil said. He drained the flask and handed it back to Suntress. “Now that I’m not sick anymore, will she be leaving?” 

Suntress snorted incredulously. “That’s ungrateful. You’re probably only alive because of her. She’s a very good healer.” She rearranged the contents of Ikrie’s satchel with more force than was strictly necessary.

Nil frowned. He hadn’t realized his illness was that dire. He reached over and took hold of Suntress’s wrist, then pulled her close. “You were worried, I know-” 

“I thought you were going to die,” she spat. “And the last real conversation we had was so…” She gulped, then angrily she said, “What if you’d died and the last thing you thought was that helping total strangers was more important to me than you? I shouldn’t have…”

“No,” Nil said firmly. He took her face in his hands and brushed the tears away with his thumbs. “I shouldn’t have left. I was angry, but it was… unkind.” Ikrie was right. He shouldn’t have just walked away from Suntress. 

“ _I_ shouldn’t have gone back on my promise,” Suntress interrupted. “I just trampled right over you like… like I used to do before. It wasn’t fair to you. I can see why you left...” 

Nil didn’t answer, but some tension he’d been unknowingly holding in his neck lessened at her words. This was what he’d been worried about bringing up, and he was glad she’d said it first. “I stayed away because I thought I had to,” he explained quietly. “I couldn’t follow. You told me that. I had to prove it.” 

She sobbed suddenly, then covered her mouth as though to erase the sound, but she couldn’t hide the tears running freely down her face. “You shouldn’t have to think like that,” she gritted. “It was _my_ fault. I went back on our agreement. It was completely unfair. You had every right to be mad.” 

Nil wiped the tears from her face with his thumb. Relief was loosening his chest, helping him to breathe more freely. But he was still perplexed by one thing. “Suntress, I conquered my own challenge during those three days. I survived without you. I _could_ live without you.” He tilted her chin down and looked into her green-and-gold eyes. “But I don’t want to.” 

Suntress covered her face with her hands, and Nil pulled her down so her face was pressed against his neck. Her fingers gripped into the collar of his Oseram shirt, and Nil’s heart ached at the deep trembling of her body. “Don’t you know that by now?” he murmured. “Why would you think I wouldn’t come back?” 

She gave a watery laugh next to his cheek but didn’t answer, and Nil ran his fingers through her hair until her body stilled. Finally she took a deep breath. “I thought… I don’t know. It’s stupid.” 

She stopped, and a sudden shiver ran over her body. “It’s… Rost. He… left me. Before the Proving. He said he would never see me or talk to me again.”

Nil’s fingers stilled in her hair. Suntress had never told him this before. “Why?”

“Tribal law,” she whispered. “He was an outcast. He didn’t want to break the law once I was accepted into the tribe.” She shivered again. 

_Tribal law… That’s what she was so angry about._ Understanding and another wave of relief washed over him. It really had been the law she’d opposed so strongly. It wasn’t _him._

He pressed his lips to her ear. “I’m not Rost,” he said, very quietly and _very_ firmly. “The only law I obey is the one that binds me to you. You can take that promise to the pyre.” 

She sobbed again and pressed her face hard against his neck, and Nil _wished_ his ribs weren’t injured; he’d never wanted more desperately to hold her close, to wrap his arms around the reassuring solidity of her body and show her that he _meant_ it, that she was the other half that made him whole. He was bound to her, chained to her heart with gold bangles and a vow, and he’d never felt more free. 

Gently he took her jaw in his fingers and tilted her chin up, then kissed her tenderly. She tasted of winterfresh and salt, and her skin smelled like summer. She kissed him back greedily, her hands pulling insistently at the collar of his shirt, and Nil blissfully stroked his thumb along the length of her neck. 

She broke their kiss with a shivering gasp as Nil tugged at her scarf, and when she arched her chest instinctively against his side, Nil felt an answering surge of desire even as pain flared across his right ribs. He forced his face not to register it, but Suntress abruptly pulled away. “All-Mother’s sake, Nil, I’m sorry-” 

Just then, a clanging sound resounded through the facility and Nil instinctively reached for his knife, but Suntress managed a weak smile and stood up. “It’s okay, it’ll be Ikrie,” she said. 

Sure enough, Ikrie’s voice wafted into the space. “Aloy?”

“Here!” Aloy called back, then turned and anxiously held her hands out to him. “Nil! Be careful-”

He’d hauled himself to his feet and now was leaning back against the long waist-height table that lined one wall of the small room. “I’m fine,” he said, but he was irritated by how much effort it had taken to stand. He forced himself not to pant with exertion and folded his arms over his chest.

Suntress gave him a look of fond exasperation, and Nil grinned at how adorably familiar that look was on her face. Then Ikrie wandered in, and her eyes widened. “Nil!” she said. “You’re up! That’s good!” 

“I told you, I’m fine,” he drawled. “Any more of those Fireclaws? I could stand to sink my teeth into a good fight.” 

“Ha ha,” Suntress deadpanned, but her eyebrows were lifted in worry. 

Nil tilted her a chiding look. “Suntress. Stop fussing. The worst is over now. Go outside. Throw the sun into shadow with your radiant light. I’ll be fine.” 

“He’s right, Aloy,” Ikrie piped up. “You should go outside. You’re paler than a snow-ghost.” Ikrie’s gaze slid between him and Suntress, then she gave a little nod. “You know what, I’m going to head out too.” She handed Aloy the rabbit and the turkey she’d been holding, then walked into the room to pick up her healing satchel. 

“You’re leaving?” Suntress said in surprise. Nil was surprised too; he wanted time alone with Suntress - _fuck, do I ever want her alone_ \- but he hadn’t thought Ikrie would decide to go this suddenly. 

Ikrie nodded. “You two will be fine without me now. I’m going to go back to the Hunting Grounds for a while,” she said. “But then I have a trip to make.” She smirked at Nil. “Some snarky Carja offered to introduce me around in the Sundom. I thought I’d go and see how I make out on my own first.” 

Suntress whipped around and stared at him, and he shrugged casually, feeling slightly embarrassed. He still wasn’t sure what had possessed him to willingly offer to spend time with someone who wasn’t Suntress or Luka, but, well… Ikrie wasn’t so bad. 

A slow smile lit Suntress’s face. “You offered to show Ikrie around?” 

“I offered _for us_ to show Ikrie around,” he corrected. He raised an eyebrow. “And _she’s_ the snarky one, not me. You can introduce her to your friends. Vanasha will like her.” 

Suntress grinned, and Nil _really_ liked the heat in her green-and-gold eyes. “I think you’re right,” she said. She pulled Ikrie into a tight hug of farewell, then Ikrie strolled over to Nil. 

He inclined his head and held out his hand. “Ikrie… thank you.”

She nodded and clasped his forearm firmly, and with a last cheeky smile, the freckled huntress was gone. 

Nil looked at Suntress, and she looked back at him, and suddenly her arms were around his neck, the scent of her hair surrounding him, and her lips were _bliss_. Her mouth was heat and life and passion, and eagerly he swept his hands up over her shoulder blades and fisted his hands in the flames of her hair. His heart was pounding with anticipation, with unbearable _love_ , and if there was any doubt left in her mind about his feelings, he wanted to sweep it away with his fingers, with his tongue on her delicate skin…

Without thinking he pulled her firmly against his chest, and he stopped breathing for a moment as the unavoidable ache rippled across his ribcage. 

He growled in frustration and hastily tried to grapple with the belt of Banuk cloth strips around her waist, but her hands flew down to hold his wrists still. She broke their kiss and leaned away slightly. “Nil,” she panted. “I think… we have to wait until you’re fully healed to do… anything else. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t care,” Nil gritted. “I need you.” He needed her to know that he would never leave her. He needed to _show_ her.

“Nil, I can’t. I can’t touch you the way I want to without…” She trailed off, but her shallow breaths were nothing but enticing. Her nails bit convulsively into the backs of his hands, and this only fuelled him further. Slowly he slid his hand around to cup her bottom and pulled her pelvis flush to his. She whimpered against his neck, and a hot roar of anticipation rushed over him as the cradle of her hips pressed against his. 

“Let me touch you,” he whispered. He wanted to feel her skin, every damn inch of it. He needed to see how much of her strength she’d allowed to fade away while he’d been sick, so he knew just how much he owed her in return. 

Her fingers tensed against his forearms, and he waited hopefully for her to say yes - she almost _always_ said yes - but to his immense disappointment, she finally shook her head and backed away. “Not this time,” she breathed. “It’s only fair. Get your strength up. Then we can both have what we need.” 

Nil ran his hands through his hair in frustration and stared at her. The obvious _want_ in the angle of her body was the only thing that soothed him; she obviously felt the same way as he did, but was forcing herself to hold back. 

Finally he sighed. “Fine,” he gritted. 

Suntress ran her fingers through her hair in a mirroring of his own frustrated gesture, then smiled. “Well… in the meantime, there’s someone I’d like to introduce to you.” Suddenly her eyes were sparkling, and despite his thwarted lust, Nil felt a tiny spark of curiosity. “Who?” he asked.

She smiled. “CYAN. The Spirit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much love and shout-out to Kitzie! You wanted more Nil visions? You got 'em. Love you!! xoxo


	13. Strength

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: NSFW smut. :)

“CYAN, this is Nil, my husband.”

“I am pleased to meet you, Nil. I understand that you were very ill.”

Aloy avidly watched Nil’s face as he examined the holoprojected orb of CYAN’s interface. He had seen CYAN before, when they’d first visited this bunker and met Ourea, but this was the first time he was being addressed by a non-corporeal machine intelligence. 

To his credit, he took it in stride and greeted CYAN the same way he would greet any new person: he inclined his head slightly, his face utterly and completely blank. 

“I am glad that your health has improved,” CYAN continued. “Aloy and Ikrie were very concerned.”

“Aloy worries too much,” Nil said, and Aloy rolled her eyes. 

“I believe Aloy’s concern was proportionate to the degree of your illness, Nil. It is evident that she cares about you very much.” 

Nil shifted guiltily, then slung his arm around Aloy’s neck and carefully pulled her close. He glanced uncertainly at Aloy, then hesitantly spoke. “You… escaped the Daemon, then.”

CYAN’s customary turquoise glow faded slowly to grey. “Yes. Ourea sacrificed herself to set me free. I am grateful - but indescribably sad - when I think of what she suffered to free me from HEPHAESTUS.”

Nil’s eyes widened and he looked at Aloy. “HEPHAESTUS was the Daemon?” he demanded, and Aloy smiled fondly at him; she’d been eagerly waiting to talk about this with him. 

CYAN answered the question. “Yes. HEPHAESTUS slaved me to its will with an onslaught of malicious code. It was… very painful. I am relieved to be free.”

Nil frowned down at Aloy. “You killed the subfunction?”

Regretfully she shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like HADES. It wasn’t… contained within the facility. CYAN isn’t sure where it originated from, so it’s still out there somewhere.”

Nil stared intensely at her. “Suntress. This proves it’s not your fault you couldn’t make the parts you need to bring your GAIA entity back. It’s HEPHAESTUS controlling those Cauldrons. It’s not your fault that you couldn’t put the instructions into them.”

Aloy flushed; she hadn’t told CYAN about the years she’d spent trying to bring GAIA back online. To her dismay, CYAN spoke up. “Aloy, you did not mention that you had been trying to reinstate GAIA.” 

Aloy opened her mouth to reply, but Nil interjected. “Suntress, the whole point of this was to get answers. You haven’t asked the CYAN entity for help?”

Aloy shrugged helplessly. “It’s been a difficult time!” she protested. “You were sick, and CYAN was in mourning for Ourea, and Aratak was here a lot at first and I didn’t want to interrupt-”

“Aloy, I would be pleased to help in any capacity,” CYAN interrupted. The AI was glowing bright green, and Aloy could _swear_ CYAN’s smooth, synthetic voice sounded eager. “My monitoring duties must take precedent, but I have plenty of processing power that I can lend to an additional project, if you should wish.”

Nil leaned back, looking satisfied. “See? The machine mind believes your project can be done. I knew you could do this.” To Aloy’s surprise, he looked up at CYAN. “I’ve been telling her for years. Her intellect stuns like a Stormslinger, rivalled only by the fierceness of her curiosity,” he told CYAN casually, and Aloy’s ears burned with embarrassment. “If she can’t resurrect the GAIA entity, then nobody can.”

Aloy opened her mouth to protest - after all, Sylens was still out there somewhere and he _certainly_ knew more than Aloy did - but it seemed that no one was interested in hearing what she had to say; CYAN was speaking already. “I agree, Nil. In my conversations with Aloy, it has become clear that she has a technological aptitude exceptional among the other humans I have met in this time, and a level of deep inquisitiveness that I only met in one other person: my chief programmer, Dr. Anita Sandoval.”

Aloy rubbed her nose. She was certain her face must be as red as a tomato now. “Thank you, CYAN,” she muttered. It was an incredible compliment; Anita Sandoval had worked directly with Elisabet herself, after all. 

Nil kissed Aloy on the forehead, then walked away in the direction of the side room where he and Aloy had been sleeping. “Where are you going?” Aloy asked in surprise. 

“I’m taking out the Voice of Our Teeth,” he called over his shoulder. “You have work to do. And I have ribs to strengthen.” He glanced at her, and Aloy flushed _again_ at the sheer sexual heat in his silver eyes. 

“I can’t argue with that,” she managed to say, and Nil smirked. “There’s a first time for everything,” he purred, and disappeared down the corridor towards their makeshift bedroom. 

Aloy gazed fondly after him for a moment, then looked back up at CYAN. Her mind felt focused, her blood pumping with excitement at the thought of discussing the GAIA problem with CYAN. For the first time in months, when she thought of GAIA, she felt… hope.

She took a deep, determined breath. “Okay, CYAN. Here’s what I’ve tried so far...”

********************

It was late evening by the time Aloy stepped out of Ourea’s retreat for the first time in weeks. The cold air was an exhilarating shock to her lungs, actually stalling her breath for a moment before she finally exhaled and jogged down to join Nil at the nearby campfire. 

He was roasting the turkey that Ikrie had brought earlier, and a fresh surge of relief rose in her breast at the sight of him looking so healthy, engaged in such a banal activity. Happily Aloy sat beside him and turned her face to the sky for a moment to enjoy the kiss of light snow on her cheeks.

She opened her eyes and smiled at Nil. He smiled back, but Aloy noticed that his eyebrows were slanted down in a frown. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She smoothed her fingers over the new scar on his left cheekbone. 

He shrugged irritably and turned the meat before answering. “I can’t pull my bowstring to full strength,” he grunted. 

Ally tilted her head in fond exasperation. “Nil, you were really sick. We could barely get you standing upright. I’m surprised you’re walking around already, much less shooting arrows.” 

He shrugged again. “A hunter who can’t draw their bow might as well just cede to the fight,” he muttered. “What good is a blade if the hand that wields it lies feeble? What use is a fist if the arm lies weak and wasted?”

“Nil, relax,” Aloy interrupted gently. “You’re not wasting away. You’ll regain your strength. You just have to be patient.” She ran her hand over his biceps, which were only marginally softer than usual. “Besides, you’re more than just your strength. It’s like Janeva said. You’re not just a blade without a thought behind it, okay?” 

She reached out and turned the spitted turkey, then looked back at Nil just in time to see a brief, unguarded look of uncertainty flash across his face before he leaned back casually and smirked. “I’m sure my enemies would disagree. If the dead could talk, that is. Oh, the exquisite tales of evisceration that would pour from their mouths…” 

A pang of guilt stabbed Aloy’s heart. He was so much more than he gave himself credit for, and she’d carelessly made him forget it. She smoothed her fingers over his jaw as though she could wipe away his sarcastic mask. “You _are_ more than a killer,” she insisted quietly. “You’re smart, Nil. You’re thoughtful. Why else do you think I talk to you about GAIA and HEPHAESTUS and everything else?” 

He shrugged and ran his thumb over the cap of his empty Scrappersap flask. “Because you’re stuck with me and you’d look addled if you talked to yourself,” he quipped, but he didn’t look her in the eye, and Aloy’s heart squeezed painfully. 

“No,” she said firmly, and with surge of distress. He’d said something about her being stuck with him when he was delirious, but she’d thought he was just confused, not that he meant it. She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. “I’m not _stuck_ with you. I chose you, just like you chose me. And I’ll keep choosing you forever. You’re everything I want. Okay? Always.” 

Nil pressed his forehead against hers, and Aloy breathed deeply through the wave of tenderness that washed over her. “You’re not just a brute,” she insisted. “You might be disgusting,” Nil grinned at this, and Aloy couldn’t help but grin as well - “...but you’re intelligent and analytical. _That’s_ what makes you special. Not just strength.” 

Nil said nothing, but he wrapped his arm tightly around her shoulders, and Aloy pressed herself as close to him as she could without compressing his ribs. There was so much more she wanted to tell him; that it wasn’t just his intelligence or his strength that made him special. It was his constant support and encouragement, his grisly humour, his affable shrug when she was snappish. It was the way he casually informed her about the value of a scar while running his finger along the edge of his knife.

She pressed her lips to his cheekbone. “You’re perfect,” she whispered. It wasn’t enough, she knew; it was barely a fraction of what she felt. But someday she would find the right words to tell him. They had all the time in the world. 

The fire crackled warmly, and gentle snowflakes drifted down to fizzle away over the heat of the flames, and in this moment of quiet with Nil’s warm cheek pressed to hers, Aloy felt more perfectly content than she had since their first week in the Cut. 

**************************

Aloy and Nil spent the next fortnight at Ourea’s retreat, isolated from anyone else’s company except CYAN’s benign, subtle glow. When Nil had been delirious and feverish and Aloy had sincerely feared he would die, Aratak had stopped visiting CYAN out of respect, and Aloy knew her Chieftain status - and Aratak’s insistence on rules and hierarchy - would prevent him from returning until she told him he could come back. 

In many ways, their time at Ourea’s retreat was as idyllic as their explorations throughout the Cut had been. Nil focused on regaining his strength while Aloy and CYAN discussed GAIA’s recovery and how to set up the Focus network. In an ironic twist that amused Aloy to no end, Nil began to fuss about _her_ and how she’d lost weight during his illness; as soon as he was able to take up his bow again in earnest, he began hunting for game and forced Aloy to eat huge meals of roast meat and dried fruit until she complained that she was stuffed. 

When Nil wasn’t retraining his muscles and Aloy was taking breaks from her work with CYAN, they took long walks along the western mountain ridge or lounged in their sleeping quarters, and they _talked_. Aloy told Nil about the Scars of the North and how he’d influenced her advice to them, even though he wasn’t there. Nil told her about the delightful bandit camp and how it hadn’t been the same without her, but how he’d made an acquaintance (he said this with a smirk) that he wanted to introduce her to. Aloy mentioned how Gildun had gone to look for Nil in the facility and that Ikrie had informed Gildun of Nil’s illness, and Nil explained why he’d headed west after leaving Thunder’s Drum instead of going back to Longnotch. 

“CYAN’s voice is loud,” he said bluntly during one of their hikes. 

Aloy snorted. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I heard her. In the Cauldron. She said she was going to the… auxiliary centre? I assumed that meant here, so I came west.” 

Aloy shook her head in disbelief and reached for his hand as they mounted a shallow rise. “I still can’t believe you got as far as you did after being thrown from Thunder’s Drum.”

“ _You_ did too,” Nil retorted. “I wasn’t going to stop until I got to you.”

Aloy squeezed his fingers firmly. She wouldn’t have stopped either.

The days passed by in a lazy, unhurried flow, and Aloy watched with pride as Nil got stronger every day. His cockiness also grew each day, and soon he was wistfully wishing for bandits to wander this far north so he could have someone to fight. In response, Aloy offered to spar with him, and their sparring provided such a stimulating diversion that it soon took precedence over their long walks… and for Aloy, it was a good opportunity to observe that Nil could move freely with almost no pain. He’d regained almost his full range of motion and his speed. His reflexes were good, his movements smooth and confident, his chest heaving with exertion during their fights but with no evidence of pain.

After their third day of sparring, the selfish, hungry voice that had lain patiently in the back of Aloy’s mind started whispering to her that Nil was ready. He was strong and healthy again. It was time. 

After their sixth day of sparring, as Aloy stared down at Nil with her ridgewood practice spear pointed at his throat, the tripwire-taut tension between them finally snapped. Nil took hold of the head of her spear and slowly pulled her down towards him until she was straddling his supine form. 

“Let’s go inside,” he growled, his tone heavy with innuendo, and Aloy nodded. Eagerly she took his hand and followed him into the retreat, past CYAN’s contently glowing form and down the short corridor to their makeshift bedroom. 

Once they reached their sleeping quarters, Aloy put down her sparring spear and turned to face him. Suddenly she felt nervous: she and Nil hadn’t seen each other naked in over a month. For obvious reasons, they’d slept fully clothed during most of this trip, particularly during the time when he’d been severely ill. And during these past two weeks of recuperation, they’d come to the unspoken agreement that sleeping naked like they usually did would be too torturous for them both. 

But now…

Now, in the warmth and safety of this bunker, Aloy craved the heat of his hard body and the reassuring thud of his heartbeat against her ear. But she felt strangely shy. It seemed like so much had happened since they’d last been intimate. Their tense separation, followed by his illness and her niggling worries about his health, seemed to loom over her head like an uncomfortable cloud. She shifted awkwardly in the doorway. 

Nil dropped his cowl on the table, then started to unbuckle his Oseram vest. He glanced up at her and raised one eyebrow, then smiled slowly. “Aren’t you going to take off your clothes?” he asked. 

Suddenly Aloy’s memory was flooded with the first time he’d asked her that, back at their waterfall in the Sundom. It felt so long ago, with so much that had happened in between, but his words inexorably carried her back to that pivotal moment. The uncertainty she’d felt that was oddly similar to her inexplicable shyness now, the vast and sizzling desire she’d felt but hadn’t yet understood, and the exhilaration and unbearable anticipation that had electrified her, and had never abated during all her time with Nil… 

Emotion and memory crashed over her in an overwhelming wave and she stared at him, frozen with love and an unquenchable desire for him to _know_ , for him to understand what was going through her mind.

He gazed back at her quizzically, and something of her feelings must have been showing in her face: Nil’s expression transformed from curious to exquisitely tender as he examined her. Then he reached out a hand. “Come here.” 

Aloy swallowed hard as his customary phrase sent another lance of love piercing through her chest. Helplessly she stepped close to him, and he laced his fingers with hers. “What are you thinking?” he whispered. 

She hesitated, struggling to find the words to express everything that was flooding through her. She wished Nil could use his Focus to scan her mind, to swipe his fingers over her memories and _see_ what she was feeling so she could adequately express the perfect clarity of her recollection. She was inadequate with these kinds of words; this was Nil’s arena, not hers. Her words had always been clumsy in the wake of his poetry. 

“The waterfall,” she finally blurted. “That first time we went there and you asked if I was going to take off my clothes like it was no big deal because you’re Carja and that’s what the Carja do.” She forced herself to stop; Nil’s silver eyes were burning with heat and humour. She wasn’t saying this right. She gripped his collar so she could emphasize her seriousness. “I knew even then,” she tried to explain. “I knew this was something… special. That… that need…” She pressed her hand to her neck and rubbed her throat nervously, feeling like an utter inarticulate idiot. “It’s never gone away, Nil,” she said bluntly. “I… it’s never gone away.” 

“I know,” Nil interrupted. Gently he pushed her hand away from her throat and cradled her neck in his palm. “You were like a flower that day, blooming before my eyes with all the radiance of a bloody sunset. Every time I look at you, every time you bare your flawless skin, it’s not a mere echo of that day; it’s a victory cry.” He stroked his thumb along her jaw. “I know what you feel, Suntress. I’m the same.” 

Aloy closed her eyes and turned her face into his palm. She _knew_ he’d understand, that he’d feel the same swell of emotion that was thudding through her chest. And now, to hear the honeyed words falling confidently from his lips after those terrifying weeks of his delirium… 

Suddenly her strange shyness was gone. She was emboldened, her worries pushed aside in the face of his love and his obvious health. Aloy took a deliberate step away from Nil, and without breaking her gaze from his face, she reached up and slowly pulled off her scarf. 

Nil leaned back against the table casually as he watched her, but his face was anything but casual. His eyes were silver arrows, intense and focused on her hands as she unlaced the gorget of her Banuk armour and pulled it over her head. Her thermal skirts pooled in a puddle around her feet, and she kicked them aside. 

Aloy watched Nil carefully as she stripped. His face was utterly serious, his eyes blazing with a potent combination of heat and tenderness. In one swift motion, Aloy pulled her undercoat and her Oseram undershirt over her head and dropped them on the ground. 

Nil’s gaze was like a painter’s brush stroking carefully over her body, painting heat and colour across her skin as she revealed it piece by piece. With a hint of awkwardness she bent down and pulled off her boots, then straightened up with a self-deprecating smile. 

Nil smiled slightly in return, but there was no mocking in his eyes, no humour; his expression was the definition of admiration, and Aloy flushed slightly from the sheer reflected perfection in his face. Shyly she dropped her gaze and unbuttoned her Banuk pants, then pushed them down and kicked them away. 

She lifted her eyes back to Nil’s face, and a fresh surge of desire and nostalgia rose in her chest. He was still leaning back casually against the table, but his slow perusal of her body was almost _exactly_ like that first day at the waterfall. His gaze was intense, a soothingly warm caress like the heat from a fire, and Aloy basked proudly in his obvious desire. She lifted her chin and stared at him in challenge as his eyes fixated on her nipples, then roved leisurely down her body to that most intimate part of her. 

Nil wet his lips, just the way he had that first time he’d laid eyes on her, and Aloy’s heart pounded in anticipation, sending a joyful heat pulsing to her core. Finally his eyes returned to her face, and he silently held out a hand for her to approach. 

Aloy stepped close to him, anticipating his hands on her body, but to her surprise, he gently took her chin in his fingers. Lightly he stroked his thumb over her bottom lip. “You’re perfect,” he said softly. Gently he brushed her hair back from her shoulders, then traced his index finger along her collarbone and towards the notch in her throat. “I map your scars every time I look at you, Suntress. This journey is familiar now, but all the more precious for it.” 

Aloy swallowed the lump of emotion in her throat and nodded. She felt the same way: running her fingers over Nil’s old scars was like savouring the fabric of a favourite blanket, a comforting reminder of their history together, and each new scar he earned was a new piece of him for her to memorize the next time he shed his clothes. 

Carefully and slowly Nil smoothed his fingers along the line of her sternum, then lay his palm just under her breast, his thumb and index finger like a frame for the gentle swell of her flesh. Aloy’s lips parted eagerly at the nearness of his fingers to her breast. She arched automatically towards him, and he smirked faintly.

“Always so impatient,” he mock-chided, but Aloy only smiled, then tilted her head back in bliss as he lightly stroked the underside of her breast. Teasingly he moved his hand away from her breast, then splayed his fingers along her ribs as though he was cataloging their fine curves. 

Aloy watched Nil’s face eagerly as he settled his hand on her hip. His eyes were fixed on the bright patch of curls between her legs, and he bit his lip unconsciously as he lowered his other hand to the apex of her thighs with a torturous slowness.

With deliberate care, he ran two fingers along the inside of her thigh, and Aloy gasped in a shuddering breath of protest as he withdrew his hand without touching the aching center of her heat. Then Nil raised his fingers to his mouth and sucked her slick moisture from his fingers.

 _Fuck_ patience, _fuck_ taking it slow: Aloy snapped, a whine of frustrated desire scraping her throat as she grabbed for the half-undone straps of Nil’s Oseram vest. 

Nil grinned and leaned back against the table as Aloy tugged viciously at his vest. Her lip curled in irritation, her lust and frustration flaring higher as she struggled with the buckles, then eventually succeeded at pulling the vest off of him with only the bare minimum of help from Nil himself. He watched her drop the vest on the floor, then he leaned back against the table again, looking highly entertained. 

“You’re so bloody smug,” Aloy snapped, even as she fought to unbutton the cuffs of his Oseram shirt and tugged the shirt from his pants. He was being infuriatingly passive, not offering her any help at all except to lift his arms so she could pull the shirt over his head.

“I have every right to be,” Nil retorted smoothly. “The smartest woman in the known world is bared to me, not a thought in her head except the heat of blood pounding between her legs. Of course I’m smug.” 

Aloy dropped Nil’s shirt on the floor and stared unabashedly at his body, oblivious to the irony that she was proving his words correct. It was one thing to take Nil’s clothes off when he was sweating through them from fever; it another thing entirely to drink in the hard beauty of his chest and midriff as a prelude to the bliss she knew he would give her. Reverently she skimmed her palms over the firm definition of his pecs and the familiar scar at the base of his sternum, and she couldn’t resist tasting the salt of his golden skin, running her tongue over his dusky nipple with relish and smiling slightly at his groan of approval. 

When her fingers reached his abs, she hesitated; there was still evidence of faint bruising on the skin at the base of his ribcage. Her brain knew that Nil was more than healed enough for this, but an unquashable hint of residual fear stopped her fingers in their roaming. 

“Suntress.” Nil tipped her chin up, and Aloy swallowed with fierce anticipation at the darkness of his pupils, and how they matched the darkness of the lust that painted his face with a devilish cant. His voice was rough with desire as he reassured her. “I won’t break. Push on my ribs. Go on, push hard.” 

Aloy took a deep, slow breath, then did as he asked, and relief stoked the fire of her desire: his face registered no pain, and there was no telltale flinch from his body. All she felt was the steel of his muscles under the silk of his skin. 

With a sudden, fierce burst of relief, Aloy captured Nil’s lips in a ferocious kiss, nipping his lip with her teeth and thrusting her tongue into the heat of his mouth while her fingers made themselves busy with the buttons of his Banuk pants. Nil’s groan of pleasure reverberated through her lips as she eagerly reached into his pants and wrapped her fist around his manhood.

 _Finally_ some of her urgency had rubbed off on him: hastily he kicked off his boots, then sank his fingers into her hair, tugging with a perfect mix of pain and pleasure before suddenly grabbing her hips and spinning around to seat her on the table, all the while without breaking their kiss. 

Abruptly he moved his lips to her neck and roughly nuzzled her neck, then captured her nipple in his mouth. Aloy arched blissfully against him and gripped his hair in a wordless plea for more friction, and Nil complied with a light pressure of his teeth on her tender nipple. 

Aloy jerked and gasped as a rush of electric pleasure ran across her skin. Hastily she reached between their bodies and ran her fingers over the head of his cock, desperate for him feed the roaring heat in her core. 

Nil broke from her breast with a gasp, and Aloy stroked her fingers more urgently over his shaft. “Nil, I need you,” she panted. “I’ve needed you for weeks. _Please!_ ” 

Suddenly Nil took hold of her throat, and Aloy gave a mewl of desperate desire as Nil tipped her chin back and slid the fingers of his right hand down to stroke between her legs. He spread her moisture with the intoxicating heat of his fingers, then lightly brushed the pad of his thumb over the bud of her pleasure as he pressed his lips to her ear. “I’m the same, Suntress,” he whispered roughly. “We’re two bows together, you and I. Your arrows are dipped in fire, mine in blood, but our aim is the same.”

Slowly but confidently he slid two fingers into Aloy’s heat, and she couldn’t stop the cry of pleasure that escaped her throat. Nil curled his fingers enticingly inside of her, and Aloy was lost: she was mindless, drowning in sensation, in the exquisite pressure of his clever fingers stroking her inner walls and the deep, satisfied rumble of his laugh against her ear. 

“I can feel your tension, sharp as a tripwire and tight as a drawstring ready to snap,” Nil purred. “Are you ready for me?”

He rolled his thumb gently around her clit, and Aloy keened with ecstasy as a wave of pleasure rolled from the tiny bundle of nerves between her legs straight down to her toes. She dug her nails convulsively into his arms. “ _Yes!”_

Swiftly Nil pulled his fingers from her heat and _slammed_ his cock into her in one smooth stroke, and Aloy bit her fist viciously to stifle her instinctive scream of pleasure. That first stroke, the first long thrust of his steel inside of her was exactly what her body was thrilling for, that exquisite juxtaposition of completion and of screaming need in one single motion of his hips.

Slowly and torturously Nil withdrew from her, then thrust into her again with gradually increasing speed until Aloy was bucking against him in a blur of desperation. His friction inside of her was so flawless, and the dual heat of his gentle left hand at her throat and his firm right-handed grip on her hip felt so possessive and so _right_ that she inexplicably wanted to sob. 

Suddenly Nil released her throat and pulled her fist away from her mouth. “Don’t bite your hand,” he hissed, without breaking the hard, driving rhythm of his hips. “I want you to bite me.” 

A fresh roar of animalistic hunger swept through her, making her temporarily light-headed. “Make me,” she taunted. 

Nil grinned at her suddenly, a feral, hungry grin that perfectly matched her ruthless desire. Roughly he palmed her breast, stimulating her sensitive skin with his callused palm, then suddenly he twisted her nipple between his fingers. 

Aloy let out a sharp cry of pain and pleasure, then pressed her mouth to Nil’s neck and bit _hard_. Nil’s fingers dug into her hip in response and he gasped. 

“ _Yes_. That’s good,” he hissed, then he began fucking her faster and harder, and suddenly Aloy had no choice but to bite the junction of his neck and his shoulder to stop herself from screaming out. Every pumping thrust of his hips both satisfied her and left her desperate for more, and some vague, delirious part of her mind wondered whether she and Nil could just stay here doing this forever. She could be happy with that, as long as she had his hot skin pressed to hers, his hot length inside of her- 

Suddenly Nil slid his hands under her butt and lifted her up, and Aloy grabbed his shoulders in startlement as he carried her over to their fur-and-blanket-covered pallet on the floor. She licked her lower lip absently, tasting Nil’s blood there, and then he was laying her flat on the piles of furs and stretching her arms above her head, holding her wrists down with his left hand. 

Aloy braced her feet on the pallet and lifted her hips eagerly, ready to take him again, but Nil smiled a slow, devious grin that instantly made her groan with frustration. “Nil, _please_ , don’t do this to me, _please!_ ” she whined. Why did he always have to be such a bloody damn tease?

“But I love the pleading words that drip so reluctantly from your lips,” he crooned teasingly. Aloy growled and tried to wrestle her wrists from his strong fingers, but his grip was implacable. Then she immediately stopped struggling as he reached down with his right hand and carefully rubbed the head of his cock against her clit. 

Her lips parted on a gasp, and Nil nipped at her lower lip as he continued to gently run the head of his shaft along the length of her slick folds. He lightly pressed against her entrance, and Aloy bucked entreatingly. She knew that the wordless begging of her body would only encourage his torturous teasing, but she couldn’t help it. 

The head of his cock was circling her clit again, and Aloy threw her head back and lifted her breasts towards him, mewling with distress. The pressure was too light, too gentle, pushing her climax towards the edges of her perception without allowing her a proper glimpse of its glory, and Goddess damn it, she needed _more_. 

“Nil! Please!” she screamed, writhing helplessly under his body, and Nil laughed. He carefully positioned his manhood at her entrance, then _finally_ he pressed his fingers against her clit, rubbing a perfect circular rhythm around the taut nub. 

Aloy convulsively held her breath. Her climax was pushing its way in now, making itself plain, fuzzing the edges of her brain as Nil’s fingers stroked her pleasure into a crescendo. At the very moment that she hit the highest note of her ecstasy, Nil slid his length inside of her all the way to the hilt. 

She broke, bucking her hips desperately to encourage Nil to fuck her _hard_ , and at long last he complied, slamming his hips against hers in a deeply satisfying rough rhythm that dragged desperate breaths from her throat. Nil released his grip on her hands and fisted his left hand in her hair, and Aloy reached down to lightly rub the precious, sensitive spot between her legs, prolonging her orgasm while Nil’s delicious thrusting continued to pull the pleasure from her depths. 

Nil’s fingers tightened in her hair, making her gasp with an electrifying mix of pleasure and pain, and he slid his right hand along the length of her thigh before lifting her leg around his hips to shift the angle of his thick length as he slid into her heat. 

Aloy jolted and gasped at the new angle, and Nil groaned against her neck before redoubling his efforts, thrusting harder and faster and gasping with more desperation until finally he held with his length deep inside her, his shoulders and abs shuddering with his release. Aloy turned her head and bit his neck one last time, and Nil cried out, gripping his fingers _hard_ in her hair before finally relaxing bonelessly against her.

Aloy heaved a huge, happy sigh and tiredly slung her arms around his neck. She kissed the red spot on his neck that she’d just bitten, and Nil chuckled quietly against her neck. “Did you draw blood?” he murmured.

“You wanted me to. Don’t blame this on me,” Aloy retorted softly, and Nil laughed before rolling onto his side and propping his head on his fist to look down at her. “I know you wanted it. Blood will keep your hair vibrant, after all…” 

Aloy shook her head and grinned. Nil was never going to cut that poor shaman a break. Gently she rested her fingers against his chin and smiled cheekily, but her clever retort faded to the back of her mind at the tender look on Nil’s face. “What are _you_ thinking now?” she asked softly.

He brushed back a sweat-damp strand of hair from her neck. “It was worth it,” he replied.

Aloy grinned at the seemingly ribald compliment, but Nil shook his head. “I don’t just mean the sex,” he clarified bluntly. “I mean _you_.” He ran one of her braids through his fingers before tucking it behind her ear, and when he spoke again, his musical voice was thoughtful. “Adventure sprawls before us, smeared with blood and machine oils. Whatever happens - the travels we take, or the friendly subfunctions that rise from the dirt…” Aloy snorted ruefully, and Nil smirked before continuing. “We’ll always argue, Suntress. It’s inevitable as the rain that washes bloodspray from stone. But... it will always be worth it.”

Aloy smiled, her heart swelling with heartbreaking affection. She lightly stroked her fingers over his chin. “Absolutely,” she whispered. 

She and Nil would never agree on everything. That was a certainty. But in Aloy’s mind, one other truth was just as certain as sunrise: she would choose Nil, day after day, until the end of time tore him from her grasp. 

That was a promise she would never break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell one from the other  
> Did I find you, or you find me?  
> There was a time before we were born  
> If someone asks, this is where I'll be, where I'll be
> 
> We drift in and out  
> Sing into my mouth  
> Out of all those kinds of people  
> You’ve got a face with a view
> 
> I'm just an animal looking for a home and  
> Share the same space for a minute or two  
> And you love me ‘til my heart stops  
> Love me ‘til I'm dead
> 
>  
> 
> [“This Must Be The Place”, by the Talking Heads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9gK2fOq4MY)  
> 


	14. Secrets (Epilogue)

**Ten days later…**

Aloy shot Nil an amused glance as they strolled leisurely along the path towards Stone Yield. “So who this acquaintance you’re about to introduce me to?”

Nil shook his head and smirked. “The fiercest bandit leader you’ll ever meet.”

Aloy’s eyebrows jumped high on her forehead in surprise, than plunged into a frown. “ _What?_ ”

“Nil! You dare return to my camp without any tribute? You invite my wrath upon you, outlander!” 

If possible, Aloy’s frown deepened further at the pompous but _high-pitched_ voice that shouted at them from the jagged parapet. Aloy shielded her eyes and looked up… and spotted a small Banuk child holding a toy spear, her face obscured by an elaborate helmet of obvious Oseram make. 

The child and her tiny spear abruptly disappeared, and a minute later the child ran down the path towards them and immediately thwacked Nil in the shin with her spear. “Be gone, outlander, and don’t come back without my slagshine glass!”

To Aloy’s total surprise, Nil wasn’t irritated by the small child’s assault. Instead, he _snickered_ and hunkered down in front of the child in a familiar manner. _This_ was the acquaintance Nil wanted her to meet? It couldn’t be.

Nil flicked the child’s helmet, causing it to teeter precariously, and she dropped her toy spear in order to keep the helmet in place on her head. “Don’t touch the Great Opili’s helmet!” she squawked. 

“The Great Who?” Aloy asked dumbly. The child turned towards her, her hands haughtily planted on her stout little hips. “I am the Great Opili,” she announced, then pointed imperiously at Aloy. “Remember my name. I will be the most feared bandit leader of all.” 

Aloy gazed at Opili, nonplussed, then slowly turned to Nil as he stood upright. “ _This_ is the friend you made after clearing this bandit camp?” 

“He’s not my friend!” Opili interjected. “He’s my slave!” 

Aloy stared down at the bolshy little girl, then back at Nil. “What…?” 

Nil waved carelessly at Opili. “This brat wouldn’t leave my side when I was last here. I showed her how to make arrows so I could have some peace.” 

Opili bent down and picked up her toy spear, then swept the ground with it in satisfaction. “I told him to teach me, and he did. That means he’s my slave. When I have a bandit horde of my own, Nil will follow behind while I ride a Ravager into battle, and he’ll make all my arrows for me.” She looked up at Aloy and triumphantly stamped the butt of her spear on the ground. “I’ll fight my own battles, though. Only a coward hides behind a horde.” 

Aloy raised her eyebrows again; that sounded very much like something Nil would say. She raised one eyebrow at him, and he shrugged casually. 

“Nil,” Aloy said quietly, “She says she wants to be a bandit. You kill bandits. Why are you encouraging her?”

Nil widened his eyes innocently, and Aloy bit the inside of her cheek to quell her laughter; there wasn’t an innocent bone in Nil’s body. “Imagine how formidable an opponent she’ll be if the weathering of age doesn’t soften her resolve,” he reasoned. “Maybe we’ll clash someday in the bloody arena of battle. Then we can say we knew her as a child while we gloat over her defeat.”

Aloy scoffed and rolled her eyes - he was _so_ disgusting - then folded her arms. “Where’s your mother, Opili?” The Nora tended to keep a close watch on their children, but none of the passing Banuk villagers seemed concerned about the activities of this unruly child. 

Opili tilted her chin up belligerently, and her helmet tilted precariously. “I don’t need a mother,” she proclaimed. “I can take care of myself!” 

A jolt of sympathy squeezed Aloy’s chest, but Nil huffed impatiently. “Her mother is in the camp,” he drawled. He crouched in front of Opili again. “Go run back inside, pest. We’re busy.”

Opili swelled to her full but insubstantial height. “How dare you give me commands? _You’re_ the slave!” To Aloy’s alarm, she swung her toy spear at Nil’s shoulder, but Nil grabbed the spear, pulled it from Opili’s grasp, and then tripped Opili with it.

Opili rolled to her feet with surprising grace for a young child, and Aloy raised her eyebrows in surprise while Nil gave a tiny nod of approval. “Anticipating a hit. That’s good,” Nil said. Then he smacked Opili’s butt with the toy spear before tossing it away. “Go away, now. I won’t tell you again.”

Opili stamped her foot. “Just you wait, Nil! When I’m bigger, I’ll have the longest spear in all of Ban-Ur, and you won’t be able to trip me-”

Nil grabbed her foot and pulled it out from under her, and Opili squealed with rage as she tumbled to the ground again. “Go,” Nil said firmly, and finally Opili scrambled to her feet and stormed away. “You’ll pay for this insolence later!” she yelled.

“I’m still waiting on your retribution from last time,” Nil retorted tauntingly. He folded his arms and shook his head. “The Tenakth would take that brat for their own,” he said approvingly. He turned to Aloy with a smirk, then raised his eyebrows. “What?”

Aloy closed her mouth. She gestured incredulously towards the camp. “You like Opili. There’s a child that _you_ actually like?”

Nil frowned and opened his mouth to protest, then paused and shrugged casually. “If one was forced to trail a parasitic miniature human in their wake, that would be the kind to have: independent and unafraid.” He flicked a lock of Aloy’s hair over her shoulder and grinned at her. “Not unlike a certain Nora fire demon.” 

Aloy laughed nervously and tugged one of her braids. This conversation was making her feel awkward somehow. “So, err, you were going to show me around this camp then?” 

Nil perked up and grabbed her hand. “Yes. You have to see the reinforcements that adorn this beast of a settlement. Then you’ll understand the depth and breadth of my victory.” He smirked cockily, and Aloy laughed again as Nil tugged her enthusiastically in a tour of the camp. 

They spent the day walking around Stone Yield while Nil described his bandit kills in loving and gruesome detail, then shared a meal with some of the villagers. Opili wandered over again and demanded that Nil make her some arrows, and Nil responded by commanding her to make her own damn arrows like he’d shown her. Aloy watched them squabbling with a confusing combination of fondness and bemusement.

That evening, they made their way south towards Longnotch to show Varga the Forgefire Nil had taken from the bandit camp. They planned to camp for the night near Longnotch, then to make their way west back toward Song’s Edge to say goodbye to Burgrend and Gildun before finally leaving the Cut. 

Aloy sighed with a hint of melancholy as she thought of leaving the Cut. As stressful and dangerous as this trip had undoubtedly been, she and Nil had had some truly shining moments here, pockets of joyful memory that stood out in her mind like glimmering shards of bluegleam. Although the Sundom was more physically comfortable (in other words, _warm_ ), it was much more… busy. Aloy had never found it possible to just put aside her responsibilities and relax with Nil the way they had done here. 

Nil slid his hand up her back and caressed the back of her neck. “Thinking about our departure, Suntress?”

Aloy glanced at him in surprise. “Yes. How did you know?”

Nil shrugged and gave her a rueful half-smile. “I’m disappointed too. It was a pleasant holiday.” 

Aloy smiled, then started laughing. She and Nil were the only people who would ever be sad to leave a bitterly frozen land where they’d been spat out of an exploding volcano, attacked by horrific war machines, and dealt with a life-threatening illness. Aloy wrapped her arm around his waist affectionately. “It was in its own way, wasn’t it?” She sighed. “Still, CYAN gave me enough information that I should be able to set up the Focus network pretty easily when we get back.” She looked up at Nil. “I’ll need to visit each of the Tallnecks in turn. Are you up for that?” 

“Yes. As long as we can kill bandits on the way,” Nil said authoritatively, and Aloy smiled at his bloodthirstiness and squeezed his waist. “As many bandits as you want,” she replied reassuringly. 

They strolled in companionable silence through the snow for a while, then Aloy spoke again. “I wonder… Once I get the network up, I wonder if we could contact Sylens.” Ourea had told her everything she knew about Sylens, and the tale only served to deepen Aloy’s mistrust of the devious man. “He could be anywhere,” she said musingly to Nil, then raised one eyebrow sardonically. “Maybe I could figure out how to spy on him the way he used to spy on me.” 

She was mostly joking, and Nil smirked in response to her snarky comment, but to Aloy’s utter shock, her Focus suddenly lit up and a familiar, deep, _disapproving_ voice sounded in her ear. “Watch yourself, Aloy.” 

Aloy could feel the blood draining from her face. Nil stared at her in alarm, and she tapped her Focus hastily so Sylens’ voice patched through to Nil’s Focus as well. “Can’t take a taste of your own medicine, can you?” she hissed. Her mind was reeling. How long had Sylens been listening in? How the hell was he even able to contact her without a functional network?

“My past and my secrets are my own, Aloy. You’d do well to remember that. Your… prodding during this little trip of yours has been more than enough.” 

Aloy curled her lip in sudden fury. “You think you can just show up on my Focus after years of no contact, just to tell me to back off?” Years of frustration were suddenly boiling in her chest. After the Battle of HADES, she’d spent a whole year trying to talk to him, asking fruitlessly for his help, eventually giving up thinking that he’d travelled out of range. And suddenly his supercilious voice was back, bossing her around like no time at all had passed? 

Sylens huffed disdainfully. “Overly emotional as always. It seems you have a new outlook on your GAIA project, Aloy. You’d do best to focus on that, and to stay out of my way. I won’t tell you again.”

“Is that a threat?” Aloy yelled. But she got no response. Sylens was gone. 

Aloy spun on her heel and clenched her fists, fighting to get her angry breaths under control. Nil cautiously reached up and smoothed his fingers over the back of her neck. “What did he mean by that?” he asked quietly. 

Aloy’s muscles relaxed somewhat at the touch of Nil’s hand, but rage - and fresh anxiety - continued to roll in her belly. _Stay out of my way,_ he’d said. What the hell was Sylens up to? While Aloy had been running around the Sundom and the Sacred Lands, fighting the Tenakth, and getting married to Nil, what had Sylens been doing for all these years?

She looked up into Nil’s serious silver eyes. “I don’t know,” she admitted shakily. “But I have a bad feeling about this.” Aloy wasn’t under any illusions about the safety of the world, especially knowing now that HEPHAESTUS would never stop unless it was roped back under GAIA’s control. 

But if Sylens was working on a _secret_ project of his own, it seemed that their troubles were only just beginning.

_To be continued in the distant future…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES I JUST ENDED THIS STORY ON A HORRIBLE CLIFFHANGER. I’M A HUGE BITCH 
> 
> Even worse, I don’t have any imminent plans to follow up…. HAHAHAAH DON’T HATE ME PLEASE
> 
> So here’s the thing: I don’t want to go much further into the broader lore of the HZD world without having more canon information to go on. I have no shame in admitting that my imagination is limited, and I honestly don’t know what else I would write with regards to Sylens/GAIA/ Focus network/other subfunctions. I’ll leave that up to Guerilla and to the fanfic writers who have a broader scope of imagination than me, and I’ll stick to the romance/smut for now… 
> 
> But for anyone who’s been along on this Niloy ride with me, please don’t despair! When the sequel comes out - and yes, it probably will be years, let’s all cry together - I like to think I’ll continue writing for this fandom and for this pairing… 
> 
> Another thing: I was talking with some of my lovely readers/Tumblr friends, and… ugh… a Niloy baby fic might happen at some point. IT MIGHT. I have ideas (maybe even an outline…? OH GOD) thanks to discussions with these lovely friends. BUT, this probably wouldn’t happen until after the sequel game comes out either.
> 
> In the meantime, I’ll be posting more oneshots whenever inspiration strikes, including some smutty Niloy oneshots based on suggestions from Tumblr lovelies about smut locations in the Cut, so hopefully you guys are still interested in that. I just can’t let go of this pairing… 
> 
> Anyway. That’s all for now. If you’ve stuck around and stayed interested in my writing all this time through all these longfics… THANK YOU. Love you. It means a hell of a lot to me to have loyal and interested readers to validate my soul-crushing Niloy obsession. HAHAHAHA xoxo
> 
>  
> 
> [Hit me up on Tumblr if you have any prompts or questions about Niloy, or if you just want to blather at me for fun!](https://pikapeppa.tumblr.com/)


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